


Off Panel

by trascendenza



Category: Psych
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Female Protagonist, POV Female Character, Slow Burn, Superpowers, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 03:05:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4590654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trascendenza/pseuds/trascendenza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Juliet develops superpowers AU. <em>“If this weren’t the culmination of all my childhood dreams it would really suck,” she said to no one in particular.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

At 3AM in a summer peach and buttercup yellow apartment (with a few carefully placed seafoam and turquoise accents), there were two cats curled up on their owner’s bed, their claws digging into the sheets and their spines arched high, the fur raised off their backs.

Juliet O’Hara woke up. She found herself blinking at her ceiling.

It was… not at the proper height a ceiling would normally be.

She slowly reached out her hand and touched it, and then rotated her head, looking down at her bed. It was four feet below her.

“Oh, my _God_ ,” she said, flailing on her new center of gravity, which seemed to be somewhere in her abdomen. (Well, maybe a little lower, but that was kind of awkward to think about.) Her forehead hit the ceiling with a resounding _thud._

“Definitely not a dream, then,” she said, rubbing her forehead and glaring at the stuccoed surface. The gesture was more automatic than necessary; oddly, she wasn’t feeling any pain even though judging by the sound she’d knocked herself hard enough to bruise.

The corners of her lips turned down and her eyebrows met with a single faint crease between them. Very slowly and deliberately, she looked down at her abdomen-just-a-little-lower-actually area and pointed a finger at it menacingly.

“And... down,” she said, in what she hoped was a commanding tone.

Apparently, her not-abdomen area didn’t agree. She stayed suspended with her forehead pressed to the ceiling.

“If this weren’t the culmination of all my childhood dreams it would really suck,” she said to no one in particular.

Selina, her fur back down to mostly normal heights, meowed from below.

“Thanks, girl,” Juliet said, shooting a small smile down at her cat. She raised her palms to the ceiling, bracing herself and taking a deep breath.

“Here goes nothing,” she said, and pushed herself off.

She hurtled through the air with all the force of a hydraulic press, slamming into her bed feet-first. The frame didn’t even bother groaning in complaint – it simply splintered under the force, cracking neatly down the middle.

Feathers floated through the air, some of them softly coming to land on Juliet’s hair.

“Okay, scratch that,” Juliet said, shoving flyaway strands of hair away from her face with both hands and surveying the damage grimly. “This _totally_ sucks.”

“Mrrrrow,” Barbara offered from the floor where she and Selina had leapt, tipping her ginger chin up regally.

“Tell me about it,” Juliet said, and set about extricating her feet from the cavity she’d bored into what once had been her very comfortable bed. She grabbed the blanket and made her way to the couch, the cats following behind her.

*

Three and a half hours later, Juliet awoke with two cats on her chest and a hunger unlike any she had ever known.

“Time to get up, lazybones,” she said to them, scratching them on their heads once each, and then hurriedly picked them up and deposited them on the floor. They yowled at her in annoyance, but she was too busy power-walking – yes, power-walking, with the raised elbows and loosely-held fists and everything – to the fridge where she was planning on devouring, oh, just about everything inside it.

Ten minutes and three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches later, she paused long enough to pick up her cell phone. Juggling it with a glass of almond milk, a power bar, and a bowl of Raisin Bran, she punched in #3 on her speeddial. (#1 was her parents, #2 the station.)

“Burton Guster,” came the cheerful answer and she tried to shove the mouthful of power bar to one side so she could answer.

“Gus,” she said, and it came out mangled but intelligible, maybe a little dried-cranberries-and-granola-flavored around the edges, “code red.”

“Code red?” he said, and she could imagine the expression on his face, the one he reserved for situations of mild-alarm-but-with-room-to-allow-for-higher-levels-of-alarm.

She swallowed, looking longingly at the rest of the power bar but resisting. “Level five. When’s your earliest break?”

“Ten o’clock. I get fifteen minutes.”

“Meet you in the parking lot?”

“I – okay, sure.” And she could hear that his expression had notched up to medium levels of alarmed. “You can’t just tell me what’s going on? I didn’t even know we _had_ a level five in the system.”

“We didn’t,” she said, trying to quietly suck on a spoon coated in peanut butter she’d just shoved in her mouth. It was pretty indecent, but she couldn’t find it in herself to stop. “And I can’t. It’s – you’ll just have to trust me on this, okay? I wouldn’t activate the code red without a good reason.”

“I know,” he said, and his tone wasn’t defensive or placating, it was more – a little surprised, like he didn’t know why she’d expect anything else. “I can cancel my ten-thirty and that’ll give us another two hours and forty-five minutes.”

Juliet looked at her once-presentable kitchen, which could only be charitably compared to the aftermath of a rabid bear attack now. “That might be a good idea.”

“But you’re okay, right?” he said, radiating worry across the line.

“Yeah,” she said, smiling. “I’m okay, Gus. I’ll see you then.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“Ten o’clock.”

“Ten o’clock,” she repeated, the smile stretching a little wider.

“Ten o’clock. See you then.”

“Bye, Gus,” she said, and gently closed the phone, setting it on the counter.

Then she set about unsystematically devouring everything in the kitchen. It didn’t matter what it was – the lasagna she’d bought at Safeway last night, the hard-crusted artisan bread from Trader Joe’s, the raw feta she’d gotten from Whole Foods – she ate it all with gusto, hardly pausing long enough to chew. She gulped water down like it was going out of style and tried not to think too hard about where all those carbohydrates were going to end up.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, packages scattered everywhere, she realized she’d reached the end. There were no cans or jars left to open; the fridge door was open and all that lay inside were torn wrappers. There were a few broccoli stems on the counter but her stomach, with hardly a bubble or roil of discontent, seemed to have settled down.

She leaned against the countertop, heaving a sigh. She wasn’t anywhere near stuffed, but she wasn’t hungry anymore, either. Thank God, because the only thing left in the kitchen was the canned cat food, and after she’d just shamelessly squirted mustard down her throat and crunched on frozen peas like they were party snacks, she was glad that she’d been spared some dignity.

She opened the cans for the girls and fed them, setting about cleaning up the kitchen. She turned off the fridge and figured that now would be as good a time as any to let the freezer defrost.

Then, steeling herself, she went to the bedroom. The sun was coming in the window full blast and she wasn’t happy with what it showed her: her gorgeous twin bed, its edges jagged like a piece of wood torn in half. She’d spend weeks looking for the right one when she’d moved in – a new bed to commemorate a new town. She’d debated for awhile about whether to get something bigger, but she was years away from buying a home and she knew from experience that it was no fun moving queens in and out of small apartments, and what was the point in going extravagant, really? She had zero interest in getting married or having a live-in. Plus, she liked the idea of a sanctuary all her own, just big enough for her and her cats. It had been just her size.

“Guess we’ll just have to find an even better one, huh?” she said to Selina who was rubbing up against her ankles. Selina purred, nosing Juliet’s calf, and she laughed, leaning down to pet the white cat. “Yeah, sounds like a plan.”

She headed to the bathroom to get ready for the day. She felt sure a good, long shower would grant her a calmer perspective on the day.

*

As she pulled into the parking lot she spotted him, pacing back and forth from corner to corner, putting on overly casual airs that made him look even more suspicious than he would have, and the way he jumped every time a car pulled in wasn’t helping. She smiled to herself as she parked on the other side of the lot.

“Gus!” She called as she got out of her car, waving at him. He paused mid-nervous-pacing and looked up, visibly relieved when he caught sight of her.

Unexpectedly, he unbuttoned his jacket and sprinted over at a speed he usually only reserved for situations involving guns or other methods of deadly force, the gray fabric flapping out behind him as he pounded across the pavement.

“Juliet,” he panted, clutching at his side. “What’s going on?”

“Gus, calm down,” she said, unsurprised that he was prematurely panicked without even knowing the cause. “It’s fine, really.”

“Fine? You call me up about a code red and I spend my morning worrying myself halfway to a gastrointestinal puncture, and you show up and tell me it’s all fine?”

“Yes, fine,” she said, giving his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Now stop hyperventilating before you have an asthma attack.”

“Good idea,” he said, leaning into her hand a little and letting it support him as he caught his breath again. After a minute he was back to normal and took a step back, his hands on his hips. He fixed her with a perplexed and slightly skeptical stare. “So if everything’s so fine, why am I out here in the cold instead of inside, eating a custard-filled croissant in the comfort of my well-heated office?”

“Well,” she said, feeling her eyes slide away from his as her hand unconsciously slipped down to hold onto her badge, which always made her feel more secure (it was kind of like a blankie, but much more official), “nothing’s _wrong_ , exactly, I don’t think. I think something might just be a little... um... weird.”

Gus’ degree of exuded skepticism went up a notch. “Define weird.”

“Not normal?” she said, her eyes fixed on the sky, willing some interesting clouds to disappear.

“Well, go ahead,” Gus said, pointedly stepping in front of her line of sight until she was forced to make eye contact again. “Lay it on me. What’s going on?”

She sighed. “Maybe I better just show you.”

He nodded. “Sounds reasonable.”

“Just – don’t be scared, okay?”

“Scared?” Gus scoffed in that overcompensatory way of his, going so far as to lean back on his heels and follow it up with a hearty laugh. “Please, me, get scared? I don’t think so.”

“Whatever you say,” Juliet said, smiling, deciding to ignore the twenty examples that immediately popped into her mind and clamored to be released in an affectionate-but-also-slightly-mocking tone from her mouth. Instead, she looked around the parking lot, making sure no one else was around. It was deserted and no one she could see had a window desk.

She took a few steps back and began inhaling and exhaling slowly, raising and lowering her arms in time.

“What are you doing?” Gus said, watching her quizzically.

“I’m trying to concentrate,” she said, adding a slight undergrowl to the _trying_.

“Sorry.” Gus made a zipping motion over his lips.

“Okay,” she said, starting over. She closed her eyes, scrunching them up as she concentrated, feeling her entire body become one intent, pulsating line, all of her energy focusing on that new center of balance that she’d been just a little too aware of all morning long, the way new skin under a scab that’s fallen off feels overly sensitized to the air.

When she opened her eyes again she was two feet above the ground.

“See what I mean?” she said, looking down at him.

Gus’ jaw was hanging open like he’d lost all muscular control and his eyes were large, shining orbs of pure amazement.

“Gus?” she said after a few awkward minutes where he just kept staring at her. She concentrated again and infinitesimally lowered herself to the ground, this time managing it without closing her eyes.

She stood in front of him, waving her hand before his glazed eyes. “Gus?”

No response. 

She snapped her fingers in front of his face; unexpectedly, the snap sounded incredibly loud, almost like a gunshot going off. Gus startled, his jaw _clacking_ back into place and he looked at her, wildly, blinking uncontrollably. He pointed at the spot where she’d been hovering.

“You – Juliet – Jules – I saw – in the air – you were – that’s _impossible_ –”

“Gus,” she said, taking a step forward.

“You – I can’t believe – what’s – my eyes –”

But Gus didn’t manage to finish whatever next random disjointed fragment he’d been about to toss out, because his eyes rolled back into his head and he fainted, slumping like a puppet with its strings cut.

Juliet caught him before she was even aware of having the idea to do so, one arm under his knees and the other under his arms, hoisting him to chest level. He felt boneless and was nearly weightless in her grasp.

She looked down at his face resting peacefully against her shoulder.

“Okay,” she acceded, feeling a small gleeful bubble of laughter floating up in her chest, “so maybe this is going to be kind of amazing.”

Gus murmured sleepily against her shoulder like he was agreeing.

She walked over to the sidewalk, looking around for a good place to set him down. She opted for the patch of grass near the side entrance, the near-preternatural green that office buildings and golf courses seemed to think was a sign of prestige, and lowered him gingerly to the ground. She was careful not to wrinkle his suit too much, smoothing out a few creases once she set him down.

“Come on, sleeping beauty,” she said, patting his cheek lightly. “Time to get up.”

“I love you, too, Mr. Snuggles,” Gus said, rubbing his cheek against her palm.

“Oh, boy,” she said, internally debating whether it would cross some kind of line to notice how smooth Gus’ skin was right now because, dang, what moisturizer did he use? 

“Juliet?” he said, groggily, blinking up at her. “What happened?”

“Hey,” she said, leaning back on her heels. “You fainted.”

“Fai–” he laughed, scoffing a little. “I’m sure you’re exaggerating.”

“Nooo,” she said, “I levitated off the ground, your eyes rolled back in your head and you passed out.”

Gus suddenly sat up like he was spring-loaded at the waist, grabbing Juliet’s hands in his. He looked at her with the utmost intensity, every feature exaggerated in an awestruck configuration. “Juliet O’Hara. You _flew._ “

“Yes,” she said, a smile pulling so hard at her cheeks they felt strained, because, yeah, she had _flown_. “Yes, I totally did!”

“Oh my _God_!” Gus exclaimed, and he began to bounce, which started a chain reaction of Juliet bouncing in return, because holy _crap_ , even with the broken bed and the empty kitchen and the weirdness and suddenness of it all, apparently she now had a _super_ power, which had such a high coolness factor she wasn’t even sure how to parse it.

Somewhere in the process of their shared squealing and flailing into each other, they rose to a standing position, bouncing up and down like two geeky, joyful pogo sticks.

The sound of a car pulling into the parking lot cut short their festivities, abruptly reminding Juliet how strange this would look to anyone who didn’t know… no, actually, anyone period. There were no qualifiers for that one.

And, apparently, somewhere in the process of the gleeful twirling, her hands had ended up on Gus’ shoulders and his arms had ended up wrapped around her waist. He wasn’t quite holding her up, but she was on her tip toes, and their faces were way closer together than they’d ever been before.

His expression did a transformation from ecstatic to horrifically embarrassed in the span of seconds. “Oh, my God,” he said, immediately dropping his hands, and Juliet did the same, taking a step back. “I am so sorry. I didn’t even realize –”

“No,” Juliet said, forestalling him, clearing her throat forcefully, because that was the way to play it casual, for sure, “no, it’s fine, really. We both just got… a little carried away, is all.”

“Right,” he said, also doing some forceful throat-clearing, so now that anyone who was passing by would think they were plague carriers, which wasn’t much of an upgrade from before.

They stood there, in silence, awkwardly. Juliet ran through about seven thousand different things she could say to fill the silence, but none of them seemed right like _so if I took you flying would you want to go piggyback style or Lois Lane style?_ or _football’s going to be way more interesting to watch if I find out I have x-ray vision_.

Gus snapped his fingers, like he’d been going through the same process and finally landed on something safe. “Wanna go to the café on the corner and grab coffee?”

“ _Yes_ ,” she said, with feeling. “That sounds perfect.”

“My treat. To thank you for catching me, when I had my… stress-induced episode.”

She smiled. “As much as I hate to be a stereotypical cop, a doughnut and coffee sound like just what I need right now.” Her stomach growled, punctuating her point.

Gus raised an eyebrow at her midsection, but she just waved a hand that she hoped implied _I’ll explain everything later._

“It’s close.” he said. “We could walk.”

“I’d like that,” she said, and fell into stride beside him.

They headed out of the parking lot towards Yerba Buena Avenue, the sun warm at their backs and a cool breeze coming in front the ocean.

She had no idea how Gus did it, but his reaction was like a soothing balm after the morning she’d had. The certainty that she’d made the right choice in calling him settled all the rest like silt in a disturbed creek bed, leaving the water clear and pristine.

“Hey,” she said when they stopped at the first crosswalk, turning over what he’d said in her head. “How’d you know that I caught you? You were on the ground by the time you woke up.”

“Well,” Gus said, “I just naturally assumed, as there was no soreness in my anterior cranial region and my jacket appears to be in the same immaculate condition as it was prior to the, ah, incident, except for slight creasing around the shoulder region, which I attributed to you carrying me for a few moments.”

“Wow,” she said, impressed, “you’ve picked up a thing or two since you guys started the agency, haven’t you?”

“Oh,” he said, putting on a falsely modest air that shouldn’t have been adorable, but sort of was, “that? That was nothing.”

She smiled. “Shawn’s lucky to have you.”

“You know that’s right,” he said, straightening his jacket, and they laughed.

The café was only another half block and they were there in minutes. It was an inviting small corner building, painted in warm colors and full of wood furniture and the smell of freshly ground beans and pastries.

“Non-fat half-caff cappuccino and a bagel with cream cheese, please,” Gus said, smiling brightly at the barista as he paid her.

“Coming right up,” she replied in a friendly tone that was just the right amount of warm without verging into overly chirpy. Gus walked over to wait for his drink.

Juliet spared her a quick smile, but her eyes gravitated towards the glass case of pastries like a dehydrated prisoner to drops of fresh rainwater.

“I’ll have the croissant,” she said. Then she was forced to swallow because so much saliva flooded her mouth that she was in danger of _drooling_ (in public, actual real drooling, oh God) so she decided that a larger order would be prudent. “And a bagel. With extra cream cheese. And two danishes. A bag of doughnut holes, and three custard pastries. And could you actually make my coffee a large?” She pointed. “And one of those juices. And a large iced tea, come to think of it.”

The barista was typing furiously into the touchscreen, her fingers flying over the commands. “Anything else?” she said, looking warily at Juliet.

“Um,” Juliet said, biting her lip, because this was a bit mortifying, but she thought it’d be more mortifying if she spent the rest of the day with her stomach trying to _eat_ its way out of her just to get ahold of food, so she finished with, “one of everything else on the menu I didn’t order?”

The barista blinked, her dark brown eyes wide.

“Sure,” she said slowly, methodically typing through the keypad like she was doing very important data entry, “coming right up. I’ll, uh,” her face scrunched up a bit, “I’ll bring it all out to your table when it’s ready.”

Juliet smiled sheepishly, sliding over her credit card and trying not to think about interest rates. “Thanks so much.”

Walking towards the table Gus had chosen, she carefully folded the receipt and slipped it into her wallet, having one of those brilliant hindsight revelations that if she’d just ordered everything to go, maybe she could have passed it off as her bringing all the stuff back to work to share.

Except for the fact that one minute she’d had a croissant in her hand (something for the road, she told herself when she asked the barista to slide it over to her) and the next minute she… didn’t. She had an empty hand that she was trying to surreptitiously lick crumbs off of, so the likelihood that she was finishing all that stuff _right now_ was very high.

She realized that maybe it would have been a good idea to take the entire day off.

“Where’s your drink?” Gus said as she sat down, frowning as he looked at her, doubtless already mentally preparing a very stern speech for the management about the quality of customer service.

“It’s, uh, coming,” Juliet said, giving him a reassuring smile. The croissant was a distant memory, and her stomach made some interesting sounds that were reminiscent of a thunderstorm off in the distance.

Gus raised an eyebrow. “Guess you really did need some brunch,” he commented.

“Yeah, I –”

And then they came, the barista and another one at her side, juggling a thousand small paper bags between them, and a plastic bag full of drinks.

“So sorry,” the barista said, the bags of pastries tumbling all over the table despite her best efforts to keep them in order. “But there’s at least one of everything in here.” She set down the plastic bag of drinks next to Juliet’s feet, careful not to knock it so all the drinks stayed upright, and then handed Juliet the large coffee. “If there’s anything else you need, please just let me know.”

“Uh, yeah,” Juliet said, and here it came, the rush of blood to her cheeks. “Thank you.”

She turned back to Gus, who was surveying the plethora of food with eyebrows that were now raised to their maximum height. “Yeah, I was a little hungry.”

Gus looked up, then looked down at her stomach, then back up to her face. He leaned in, whispering. “Does this have to do with your, y’know…?”

Juliet – whose mouth was half-full of a _delicious_ custard pastry, really, how was it even possible that these things were legal? — shrugged and swallowed. “I’m not sure. It started right around the same time, so I think so?”

“Simultaneous development of a supermetabolism alongside a superpower is pretty par for the course,” Gus said, in a matter-of-fact way.

She smiled. “Thanks, Gus.”

He tilted his head at her. “For what?”

 _For being you and having phrases like that at the tip of your tongue,_ she thought. “For the company.”

He smiled back. “My pleasure.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, comfortably, Gus slicing up his bagel with his fork and knife, Juliet tearing into the pastries and gulping down her coffee two sips. She moved onto the iced tea, crunching happily on the ice cubes.

“So,” Gus said, re-spreading the cream cheese, which she knew he was doing because he liked to ensure that he achieved the perfect dairy-to-carbohydrate ratio in every bite. “Radioactive spider?”

Juliet laughed, because she knew that question had been gnawing at him since he first found out. “Nope.”

“Hmm.” He thought about it. “Bitten by a half-man half-beast creature during the gibbous moon?”

“Nope.”

“Vampire?”

“Ew, no.”

“Parents discovered you in a corn field where you conveniently crash-landed in your little neonatal alien pod right behind their farm?”

She shook her head. “There’s plenty of photographic evidence of my very earthbound delivery.” She’d seen the videos, unfortunately, and her brain never, ever let her forget that. “Which is sort of a relief – not that there’s anything wrong with being Kryptonian or whatever, but I’d be sad if it turned out I wasn’t really Scottish.”

“Yeah,” Gus nodded, cutting another slice off his bagel with his fork and knife. “I don’t know why there aren’t any leading title superheroes from Jamaica. It’s not like it couldn’t happen.”

“Definitely.” she said, warming to the topic. “The way I see it, if DC can draw characters from other _planets_ , I don’t see why they don’t draw from other continents more often.”

“I hear that,” Gus said, giving her a look that said _you took the words right out of my mouth_. “I know exactly what I’d do with my first three million dollars of disposable income.”

She grinned, savoring the image of Gus and herself (because he’d naturally invite her in on this venture, that went without saying) running an imprint together.

“You’ll have to show me your business plan, sometime,” she said, polishing off the fruit juice and moving on to the green tea-pomegranate blend. 

“How did you –”

She raised an eyebrow.

Gus raised his back in an _touché_ fashion. “Only if you show me yours.”

“Deal,” she said, grinning, “next game night.” She broke one of the chocolate chip cookie in two pieces, offering him half. 

“Thank you,” he said, accepting it. “Have you considered,” he said, gesturing thoughtfully with the pastry, “that your body has a specific reason for stockpiling all this biological fuel?”

Juliet swallowed, nodding. She’d had a feeling it would come to this.

He leaned in, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “Did you want to go somewhere… more private?”

She brushed her hands with finality, dispersing all remaining traces of cookie goodness. “I think that would be best.”

*

“This is pretty anticlimactic,” Juliet said, the needle slowly bending against the fleshy part of her index finger.

“Anticlimactic?” Gus said, his eyes boggling at her. “We’ve just determined that you’re physically invulnerable to injury and that’s your definition of anticlimactic?”

“Injury by a _needle,_ “ she corrected, frowning at it. She pushed a little harder and it crumpled up like a piece of tissue paper. She let go and it clattered to the table, a squished, misshapen flat piece of metal. “Okay, well, that was a little impressive, but still. Are you sure I can’t use a knife?”

“Uh-uh, not in my house.”

“You keep all the knives in a childproof drawer, don’t you?” Juliet said, suddenly understanding why there was no knife-block on the countertop.

“Actually, I’m pretty sure a child could get in,” Gus said. “But Shawn can’t.”

“Reasonable.”

“Damn straight. I’m not gonna be responsible for the day he puts his eye out.”

“This is just reminding me too much of the embroidery my gram would make me to do before she’d give me any candy.” she said, looking at the row of needles Gus had lain out and sighing.

“You had to work for your candy?” he said, eyebrows creasing. “That’s messed up.”

“I know, right?” she said, feeling vindicated even though twenty years later and she still sometimes stress-embroidered manger scenes when a case was going badly. “And all she had was dried out tootsie rolls.”

“Well,” he said, pulling out a medical-grade case from behind his chair like he’d just been waiting for the opportunity, “I do have some other tests we could perform.”

“Wow, what’s in there?” she said, eyeing it curiously. It was wide and flat, nearly taking up the entire table.

He clicked open the catch and the top lifted, revealing all sorts of mint-condition equipment.

“Just a comprehensive battery of tests designed to confirm the presence of heightened sensory perception and/or accelerated reflexes,” Gus said, and the tilt of his head distinctly reminded Juliet of a preening bird.

She clapped her hands in delight. “I’ve always wanted to make one of these! How did you get ahold of all of this?”

“I’ve got connections,” he said, brushing his thumb along his nose. “Being a pharmaceutical rep does have a few perks.”

“I’ll say,” she said, fingering the ocular instrument. She held it up to her eye, looking through it; there was a tiny but perfectly formed Gus on the other side of the glass. “Ooooh.”

“Wait until you hear this,” Gus said, taking out the aural device, switching it on. She heard a steady, droning high-pitched whine.

“Ugh,” she said, cringing. “If this is what dogs can hear all the time no wonder they’re always chasing their tails.”

Gus scribbled something on the notepad before him.

“How many am I up to so far?” she asked, leaning in.

“What do you mean?” he said, his expression exaggeratedly innocent, and she wanted to laugh, because sometimes she couldn’t believe that Gus didn’t realize how much he gave saran wrap a run for its money in the transparency department.

“On your list,” she said. “How many do I have so far?”

He relented, ticking off a finger for each thing he said. “Confirmed flight, confirmed physical invulnerability, confirmed heightened hearing, confirmed accelerated metabolism, and confirmed enhanced strength.”

Juliet blinked. Hearing it all laid out like that made her sound like the stats on the back of the Marvel cards she’d collected as a kid. She’d loved interpreting the graphs. “Five and I’ve got a set, huh?”

“There’s a high probability you’ll have as many as ten,” Gus said, studying his paper. “If these data thus far are any indication.”

“And what conclusion have you reached, Dr. Guster?”

Gus looked up from what he was writing and beamed at her. “That you, Juliet O’Hara, are a confirmed superheroine.”

“I think I’d like to get that diagnosis in writing,” she said, laughing giddily, because _this was really happening_ and she was pretty sure she’d need the rest of her life to really process that fact.

“All things considered,” he said, “you may want to call in sick. No telling what other physical conditions will manifest today.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” she said, shuddering at the thought of accidentally breaking her desk in half if she slammed down a pencil too hard. “It’s going to take me a little time to get a handle on all of this.”

Calling in sick, however, wasn’t as simple as it sounded. After checking in with the chief, Carlton spent ten minutes grilling her to make sure she hadn’t been taken hostage and wasn’t reassuring him because she was being coerced with deadly force, and then spent ten more minutes interrogating her about her living conditions, which was his thinly-veiled way of showing concern that she was taking care of herself.

“Don’t worry, Carlton,” she said, hearing Gus putter around the kitchen, “I’m in good hands.” Then the sounds of chopping subsided and gave way to water simmering, and Gus re-appeared, leaning against the kitchen entryway.

“Hands?” Carlton said, his voice returning to its _I-suspect-kidnappers-are-eavesdropping-on-this-conversation_ pitch, “whose hands are you in? I thought you said there weren’t any ‘hands’ present in this scenario, O’Hara, why the sudden change in your story?”

Sighing, she held the phone away from her mouth. “Gus, say hi.”

“Hel-lo!” Gus called out cheerily, loudly enough to be picked up by the receiver.

“Oh.” Carlton sounded miffed that he’d been denied the chance to come and collar her nonexistent abductors. “You’re with Guster.”

“That would be the obvious conclusion, yes. He’s making me chicken soup as we speak.”

“Wow,” Gus said, pulling a wooden soup out from behind his back just as the sound of a pot boiling began in the kitchen, “you’re good.”

“And you’re sure Guster’s not being coerced with deadly force?”

“ _Carlton._ “

“Fine. But I expect you to be in tomorrow. These leads won’t hunt themselves down, O’Hara.”

“First thing in the morning,” she said. She could hear that he was about to hang up, so she quickly slipped in, “and you don’t need to cruise my neighborhood tonight, Carlton, I’m _fine_ ,” and then hung up before he could a) sputter that he intended to do no such thing, b) lecture her about how if she didn’t live in an area so full of hoodlums he wouldn’t need to go so far out of his way to make sure he didn’t have to break in a new partner, because rookies gave him heartburn.

 _Pretty sure it’s the chili dogs for lunch that give you the heartburn_ , she thought at the phone before slipping it back into its holder, because the only thing better than getting the last word with her partner was getting it twice.

“Soup’s almost ready,” he said, setting a placemat, spoon and napkin (cloth, she noted, impressed) down in front of her.

“That was really thoughtful of you, Gus,” she said, her nostrils practically tingling with the alluring aroma.

“You have a sick day, you get my grandpa’s chicken soup,” he said, heading back towards the kitchen. He returned with two steaming bowls. She was praying with all the praying muscles she had (which were a lot, because her gram also believed in thrice-daily prayer) that her stomach wouldn’t drive her to do something inexcusable like pick up her bowl and pour it straight down her throat, but she found that even after the first bite she was just hungry instead of ravenous. Her body felt more settled, more sedate, and she was able to eat at a relatively normal pace.

 _Thanks, stomach and other digestive organs,_ she thought in the direction of her belly; it burbled back something she imagined was _you’re welcome._

“I’ve got another two hours before I need to get back to my route,” Gus said, dabbing the sides of his mouth with his napkin. “And I’ve got all the ingredients for making peach pie from scratch – you in the mood?”

“Sounds perfect,” she said.

The next two hours were some of the most normal and relaxing she’d had in weeks: they rolled dough and discussed the reaction rate of anti-fungals vs. anti-inflammatories; she sliced peaches and regaled Gus with tales of all the bizarre ways suspects tried to escape, her favorite of which was trying to hide at the bottom of a pool in broad daylight; they brushed sweet glaze on the crust and they traded their family’s secret peach pie ingredients, agreeing that one day they’d have to try a recipe that incorporated both. But time flew, and she was licking the last of the vanilla ice cream off her spoon before she knew it, and Gus was handing her a tupperware with the two slices he insisted she take.

“You’ll be careful the rest of the day?” He said, still looking like he wanted to try once more to talk her into letting him take the rest of the day off.

“I will, I promise,” she said, earnestly. She’d had enough surprises for the moment. “And, Gus, this was just what I needed. Thank you.” Impulsively, she stepped forward and hugged him tightly, arms around his neck. After a beat, his hands settled gently on her back.

“Anytime, Juliet,” he said softly, and she pulled back because the shivers she felt under her skin were best left for another day.

“I’ll call you later tonight,” she said as she walked towards the door.

“Nine o’clock sharp,” he said, watching her go.

“Nine o’clock,” she repeated.

“Nine o’clock. Talk to you then.”

“Bye, Gus,” she said, waving and closing the door behind her.

As she walked down the hall, she set an alarm on her phone for 8:55PM as a reminder. She briefly considered heading back home, but discarded that with hardly a moment’s consideration. Instead, she went to her car and dropped off her wallet, cell, and other various essentials she kept on her person (a pocket knife named Cassandra, extra handcuffs, miniature binoculars, a compact first aid kit, a flare, and an assortment of other things that seemed like they’d come in handy in a pinch). She shoved her car key into a small pocket she’d stitched into her bra for emergency cash and started walking purposefully toward a less crowded area of town.

She felt a jittering sort of excitement she hadn’t felt since her first day at the academy, the anticipation of the unknown unfolding before her. She was nearly jogging by the time she found an alley that felt secure enough, two tall buildings providing her with the cover she thought would be prudent.

This time, there was a certain something welling up in her, a rush of confidence that was probably a magical side effect homemade chicken soup and peach pie in the right ratio. She jumped straight into the air without any forethought or concentration, exhaling _whoa_ when she found herself immediately suspended fifty feet up. She wobbled precariously, and if asked, she would never admit that the dent on that cement reinforcement was causing by her wayward hip. (What? Surely there were some really heavy and clumsy birds that flew around Santa Barbara.) It was lucky that she was invulnerable, because falling from this height would be pretty unpleasant if she couldn’t figure out how to get down.

She looked up. The clouds were welcoming, cumulus mounding in the sky like oversized, fluffy bunches of grapes.

 _The perfect cover,_ she thought, and started to rise. She hovered slowly, at first, but her new center of gravity kicked in and she started to accelerate, the white expanse grew exponentially in her vision.

“Oh, my God!” she cried, and then she was in the midst of the cloud, the condensation dappling her face and arms. She felt the air _whoosing_ in behind her as she came to a stop, hovering in a half-standing position.

 _I bet I totally look like Rogue right now,_ she thought, remembering all the aerial poses she’d sketched from her favorite cards in study hall. She briefly wondered whether she could pull off the streaked-white highlight look.

After a few minutes, feeling more secure, she carefully exited her shelter, cruising around the back so that it’d be nearly impossible to spot her from the ground.

Everywhere she looked was blue; she spread her arms out under the sunlight, laughing. She could hardly even conceptualize the wonder of what she was experiencing, and it overwhelmed her, an effervescent cascade of bliss. She could sense the thinness of the air, but her lungs just expanded wider and it tasted cool and refreshing, and there was an echoing quality to all this space, her hearing expanding and expanding and expanding. She closed her eyes. She could hear birds for miles, the alternately quiet and rushing flow of air, and the faroff murmur of voices, technology, the sounds of the city respiring.

She rose and rose until the sounds became mere suggestions at the edge of perception, and when she opened them again, there was nothing but clouds and the sun glittering, sharp and brilliant. She was able to see subtleties in the sun’s shape that she’d never seen before, the nuances and movement of the ever-shifting corona.

She stayed like that for some time, taking it all in.

*

“Mrrrow,” Selina said, nudging her head against Juliet’s hand.

“Hey, girl,” she said, holding out her knuckle, which Selina promptly got to work on. It was evening and she’d cleaned up the mess from this morning, replenished her food stores with as much as her kitchen could possibly hold in case another binge was oncoming, and she’d purchased a new nearly-indestructible phone and a watch to match. Both promised to perform underwater, at high altitude, and in freezing and blistering temperatures. _We’ll see about that,_ she thought, planning on pushing them to the limits of their warranties because with the amount she’d dropped on these she expected them to live up to their word.

Everything was in order other than her bedroom. She was still avoiding it, even going so far as to change in the bathroom. This wasn’t like her, she knew; she didn’t like to avoid problems because things like this just hovered over her until she resolved them. She’d always been better at fixing things than feeling bad about them, which wasn’t always good for her, but in this case it was just impractical not to have a place to sleep.

 _Tomorrow,_ she promised herself. Glancing at the time, she saw it was time to get going and packed her purse up with her new purchases, giving Selina one last nuzzle before she got up.

She took a quick glance in the mirror, smoothing her hair down and adjusting her clothes. She’d called the chief and asked if she could meet Juliet for a drink; Vick had sounded reluctant, but agreed. In all honestly, Juliet wasn’t even totally certain why she’d asked, or what she was planning on talking about, or how much she was going to explain, but there was this part of her that knew with a bone-deep certainty that this wasn’t just going to affect her morning commute – this was going to affect every aspect of her life, her career included.

Satisfied that she looked up to professional snuff, she headed out, walking towards the downtown restaurant she’d suggested. The breeze was warm and the sun was just starting to hint at its eventual destination out of sight, skimming the horizon.

She got there first, as she’d planned, and took a seat facing the door so she’d be easy to spot. Vick arrived just as she was opening her drink menu, and she put it down, standing up until Vick joined her.

“At ease, detective,” Vick said wryly, smiling a little.

“I wanted to thank you for coming,” Juliet said, sitting again. She exhaled, crossing her fingers and trying to figure out where to start.

“Not the call I was expecting, especially considering today was supposed to be sick leave,” Vick said, raising an eyebrow and looking Juliet up and down. “I must say, detective – you don’t look ill.”

“I can expl –”

“Scotch, neat,” Vick said to a passing waiter, holding out her menu.

He stopped mid-step, pivoting seamlessly and punctuating the completion of the turn with an aspiring actor’s smile. He took the menu and turned to Juliet. “And for you, ma’am?”

“I’ll have a mimosa,” Juliet said, too frazzled to come up with anything impressive, not that she could think of anything that would impress Vick.

“Coming right up,” he said with a slight bow, heading off towards the bar.

“You can save it, O’Hara,” Vick said, as Juliet was gearing up to finish the explanation she’d composed earlier. “This isn’t like you, and I’m sure you have your reasons. Despite my position, I don’t need to know everything.”

“Oh,” Juliet said, mentally backpedaling. She was completely blanking about what was going to come after the please-don’t-suspend-me-for-not-really-being-sick-exactly introduction. “Um.”

Vick’s expression softened. “What’s on your mind?”

“Well, chief, there’s been a… change in my life.”

The waiter appeared with their drinks, sliding them onto the table. “If there’s anything else I can do for you ladies, please do let me know,” he said, and left.

Vick took a sip of her drink. “Ah,” she said, a sound of satisfaction. “To the joys of not nursing,” she said, holding her tumbler up.

“I’ll drink to that,” Juliet said, clinking her tumbler in return. She wondered if the alcohol would give her any sort of buzz at all, considering her rollercoaster metabolism. She should have told him to make it strong.

“You were saying,” Vick prodded.

“Right.” Juliet tapped her fingernail against the rim of her drink, considering. “I… don’t know if I want to go into the details of the change at this time, but it’s pretty significant.”

“I see. Will this be affecting your job performance at all?”

“It may.”

“Negatively?”

“I… don’t think so.”

“Hm.” Vick sipped her drink, considering.

“The thing is, chief, the thing I wanted to know –” Juliet stopped, unable to articulate herself, a million questions she couldn’t ask swirling in her mind. _How can I have these abilities and not use them on the job every day? How long before someone finds out? Could I really lie if I had to? Could I create an alternate persona?_

“Yes?” Vick said, watching her steadily.

“I…” Juliet sighed. “Hypothetically speaking, if you were given the opportunity to do your job more effectively than ever before, would you take it? Even if it meant that everything might change?”

“If it meant that I could catch more criminals? You bet your ass I would.” She finished her drink and pushed it away from her, leaning back in the chair. Juliet wasn’t surprised that the gesture was still authoritative even though they weren’t in her office. “Change is inevitable, O’Hara. This job was never in my plan, but at the time it came along it was the best way that I could do what I needed to, and thus far it’s worked out pretty well. You can’t plan for life. That’s just the way it is.”

“I just…” Juliet shrugged. “I really like what I have right now. I’m starting to feel like I’ve really settled in. It’s taken awhile, but this has become home.”

Vick inclined her head. “It’s natural to want to hold onto what you’ve worked for. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Juliet could hear the unspoken addendum. “But?”

“No buts,” Vick said. “There’s also nothing wrong with taking a risk when the time is right.”

Juliet polished off the rest of her mimosa; she felt a bit deflated. “I was hoping it would be more clear-cut than that.”

Vick half-smiled. “Things rarely are.”

“I just want to make the right choices,” Juliet said. “I don’t usually have such a hard telling what they are.”

“Sleep on it.” Vick said.

“I will, chief. Thanks.”

Vick rose in her seat, tossing down a bill on the table for her drink. “See you in the morning.”

“See you then.”

Vick had almost turned away when she pivoted back and pointed a finger at Juliet. “I will tell you this, detective. If you’re going to be dropping a resignation letter on my desk, I expect a damn good reason.”

“Don’t worry,” Juliet said, feeling a weight lift off her chest. Despite the deliberate ambiguity of their conversation, something had clicked into place for her. “That won’t be happening anytime soon.”

“Well.” Vick’s eyes crinkled at the corners a bit, like she was trying to hide the fact that she was pleased. “That’s good. Keep me apprised of the situation.” With that, she turned and left.

Juliet watched her go before getting up to go to the register to pay her portion of the bill. Vick had left so much it would have been gratuitous for her to leave a tip, so she didn’t, though it was difficult to restrain her fingers from writing it in on the credit card receipt. (She liked to tip at least 25% unless the service was awful; she liked the idea of someone smiling when they read the bill.)

She headed out of the restaurant with her head feeling much clearer. There were still a lot of questions to be addressed – lying was still something Juliet wasn’t sure she had the faculty for, even if it was just lying by omission – but now she felt more confident that whatever came up, she’d be able to handle it.

When she was halfway home, her cellphone alarm went off, chirping a reminder at her. _Call Gus!_ the screen read, and she smiled, because she’d forgotten that they were going to be checking in.

She walked another half block – nine on the dot meant nine on the dot – and timed it so she hit the green button right at nine o’clock.

“Hel-lo,” Gus answered.

“Hey,” Juliet said, because she figured they’d reached the level of familiarity that she no longer needed to introduce herself every time she called. Plus, she knew that Gus had her programmed in as “Detective O’Hara” in his phone, so he already knew who it was. (It wasn’t snooping if she was looking through his phone to help find a kidnapped Shawn. You had to scroll past “d”s to get to “s”s.)

“Any other physical manifestations I should know about?” he said, getting right down to business.

“Nothing specific I’ve noticed, although I’ve been getting little bursts of things – suddenly I can smell stuff three blocks away, or I’m trying to read a sign faraway and after a second it looks huge.”

“Hmmm, very interesting,” he said, and she knew he was jotting down notes in what she’d mentally labeled her chart.

“Also, the whole, um, flying thing has gotten easier.” Juliet muffled a giggle, because that was _so_ a sentence she never thought was going to come out of her mouth.

“How so? More motor control over the path of flight, increased speed, higher altitudes achieved?”

“All the above.”

There was a silence that sounded like Gus blinking. “Damn, girl.”

She exhaled, gustily. “I know, Gus. This is... so much. Half the time I don’t know if I’m coming or going.”

“That’s to be expected,” he said. “You’ll probably be in a state of flux until the process of power development has stabilized.”

“How long do you think it will take?” she bit her lip, really hoping he wasn’t going to say _the rest of your life._

“At the current rate of progress, I estimate…” There was an agonizing pause during which she willed him to stop being dramatic and/or accurate, because that sound in the background was very possibly fingers on a calculator. “A month or two, barring the sudden manifestation of an unexpected power.”

“That is the best news I’ve heard all day,” she said, with feeling. Two months, heck, even three months – that was tangible. She could see an end in sight.

“Of course, I can’t be one-hundred percent sure, but taking into account the rate of development of flight and the fact that, with time, you’re going to become more skilled at incorporating any new abilities into your life as they arise – a large part of the process is adaptation – my prognosis for you is good.”

“Thanks, Dr. Guster,” she said, smiling.

“We’ll need to gather more data, of course, and I emailed you a template for a daily journal you need to start keeping.”

“Ugh, now you really do sound like my doctor,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

“Daily monitoring of symptoms is essential –”

“I’ll look at it,” she placated, heading off that bumpy road before they turned onto it. “So. Have you told Shawn yet?”

“Have I – have I – Juliet, please, I would never –” Gus blustered.

“Gus,” she said. “I’ve seen you lie.”

“I am an excellent liar,” he said with a level of conviction that wouldn’t have swayed the dictionary’s definition of _gullible._

“Gus, I’ve see you lie,” she repeated, the same way she often felt compelled to with Carlton. Boys could be slow. “You can tell him tomorrow.” She was amazed that she’d managed a day’s reprieve from the hurricane that would be Shawn’s reaction. 

“Oh, thank God,” he said, “he thought I had another secret girlfriend and even bunnies couldn’t calm him down this time.”

“That’s serious,” she said. “Well, maybe I’ll go see him myself. It’s not liked he’d believe you, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Gus said. “This time, even I probably wouldn’t believe me.”

She’d reached her house, so she slid her keys out of her pocket and opened the doors. The girls were meowing at her feet even before she’d opened it all the way.

“Yes, I’m going to feed you,” she whispered at them.

“Say hi for me,” Gus said, because there was a mutual level of adoration between him and her cats. He’d housesitted the last few times she was out of town and they never forgot him.

“They say hello back,” she said, because they meowed even louder at the sound of his voice on the other end of the line. She leaned down, scratching the tops of their heads. “So, tomorrow after work at your place?”

“I get off at five-thirty, so let’s say six?”

“Perfect,” she said, not planning to stay late like she usually would to finish up paperwork. Although neither of them said the word check-up, this felt as official as one. She briefly wondered whether she’d ever be able to go to her GP again. There was a slight tinge of sadness at that thought – Dr. di Giorgio was great, and she wasn’t above giving out lollipops – but Juliet quickly pushed it away. She had other things to focus on. “I need to start getting ready for bed, but I’ll look at the journal tomorrow, I promise.” _Well, ready for the couch, I guess,_ she thought, but also pushed that away.

“Six o’clock, then.”

“Six o’clock,” she repeated.

“Six o’clock. See you then.”

“Bye, Gus,” she said, gently closing the phone.

She poured food into the cats’ bowls, turned out the lights and then faceplanted on the couch, hardly sparing the energy to pull a blanket over herself; she wasn’t cold at all, but it felt weird to go to sleep without one.

It was mere moments before she was out, dreaming.


	2. Chapter 2

Juliet woke up floating ten inches above the couch.

“Ah!” she cried, rotating wildly in the air in her surprise. She swung around for a few minutes before steadying, and after a few calming breaths she willed herself down.

“Well, that’s annoying,” she said, smoothing her hand over the wild corona of her hair. A part of her was embarrassed at her surprise, like she should have expected something like this. Then again, it had only been a day. And now it was day two, and apparently she was sleep-floating (was that anything like sleepwalking? Or talking in your sleep? Were there treatments for this sort of thing?), so there was another thing to add to the list of “all the inconveniences of having superpowers that I never previously considered.”

“Jules?” came a voice wafting from the other side of her door. “Is that the sweet pitter-patter of your voice I hear, or have you been trying to train those cats to recite ‘America, the Beautiful’ again?”

“Just a minute, Shawn,” she said, rolling her eyes. She thought longingly of her toothbrush, but she didn’t want to subject her neighbors to Shawn trying to serenade her cats through the door at this hour. Count on him to always be an hour late coming into the station but to wake up bright and early to annoy her.

“I am a fount of endless patience,” he said, jiggling the doorhandle like a child, _are we there yet, are we there yet?_

“Your fount runneth dry,” she said as she swung open the door.

“And your hair runneth sideways,” he said, stepping inside. He cocked his head to the side, pursing his lips. “I like. It’s very wind-tunnel-esque.”

“Well someone couldn’t wait to come over until I’d had my shower,” she grumbled, walking into the living room. He followed a step behind her, like a dutiful puppy.

“Gus told me you were the source of the mystery, and I think you know how I feel about mysteries.”

“I’m surprised the spirits haven’t already told you,” she said, because she couldn’t help needling a little. Shawn was amusing when he tried to bluff.

“They’ve told me everything. I just feel that we’ve reached a point in our relationship where we share these sorts of things with each other, Jules. I’m hurt that you wouldn’t want to tell me.”

“Tell you what, Shawn?” she prodded.

“You’re pregnant?” he hazarded.

“Your skills never cease to amaze me,” she said, deadpan.

“Spontaneous sproutation of two extra and conveniently double-jointed limbs?” he said, fanning out his fingers and waving them like that was the universal gesture for extra limbs. “You’re an undercover robot sent from the future to kill of Lassiter for the good of the human race?”

“Shawn!” she said, because talk of killing her partner was no joke.

“You’re right. Obviously you were assigned to kill my _father_ ,” Shawn said, like he was making a reasonable amendment. “He’s clearly the greater risk.”

“Not even close,” she said.

“Evil twin sister in town? Barry Manilow’s voice is coming out of your toaster oven and you’re not sure if you should get an exorcism or just enjoy the sweet baritone ride?”

She looked at him. 

“Merman in your bathtub? Your lifelong dream of creating a line of home-made marmalade and scone confections is finally coming true?”

She shook her head, laughing. “I know the spirits can be vague, Shawn, but this is just embarrassing.”

“Well, I’m stumped. But if you’re ever looking for a new home for the toaster oven, just know that I’m there for you, as a friend.” He sidled up to her, putting an arm around her shoulders. “C’mon, Jules. You know you’ll feel better if you unburden your troubles on me.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. She was pretty sure she would feel no such thing.

“Unbuuuurden,” he half-whispered, half-whined.

“If you insist,” she said. She smirked, because after all the stunts he’d pulled, a little bit of revenge was going to be sweet. “But be sure to hold on tight, now.”

“Hold onto wh—”

She shot the two of them up in the air; Shawn started to slide down her side, and she ended up grabbing his hands to keep him from falling. It was still amazing to her how quickly her instincts jumped in and reacted – she hadn’t even had to consciously assess the situation before she had him.

“Well,” Shawn said, rotating his head so that he could look down at the floor. They were inches from the ceiling. “This is different.”

“You don’t even know the half of it,” she said, lowering them down slowly. She set Shawn down and released his hands before coming to a soft landing beside him.

“Jules,” Shawn said, sounding a little confused in the _I’m-not-quite-sure-I-understood-what-I-saw-but-if-it’s-what-I-think-it-was-it-was-kinda-freaky_ way. “I didn’t see any ropes.”

“That’s because there weren’t any.”

“Okay,” he said, smacking his lips. “Okay. I get it. I get it.”

“You do?” Juliet said, a little skeptical of his seeming equanimity. Shawn was not a person she associated with the word equanimity.

“This is the most elaborate practical joke that either you or Gus has ever pulled off,” he said, decisively. “I really have to congratulate you – you had the lead-in, the suspense, and the payoff was excellent. _Excellent._ I feel like this calls for some champagne-age.”

“Shawn –” she started, because she got it, this was not what he expected when he came over (to snoop into her personal business, so it sort of served him right).

“Awesomest prank all year!” he said, throwing his hands in the air. Then he turned, swiftly pivoted on his heels, and walked towards the door.

“Shawn!” she said, jogging after him. “Shawn, it’s not –”

“Don’t ruin it, Jules.” he said, half-turning to face her with an indulgent smile on his face. “It was marvelous, we all had a good laugh, but now it’s time to let it go.”

“I wasn’t pulling –”

“I don’t hear you letting go,” he said, singsonging.

“But it _wasn’t_ –”

“No one likes a gloater, Jules.” he said, shaking his head sadly. “Don’t be a gloater.”

She sighed. She looked at him, and then her training kicked in: his thumbs were rapidly circling each other over his interlaced fingers; the tip of his foot was tapping, almost as if his entire foot wanted to tap but he was restraining himself as much as he could; his gaze couldn’t stay fixed on hers.

“You’re right,” she said, trying to keep compassion out of her tone because she knew he’d take deep offense at it. “Besides, you think I have all morning to indulge in your tomfoolery?” She moved forward, shooing him out. “I don’t know about you, but I have a job to get ready for.”

“I’ll have you know that I spent an entire twenty minutes on my hair this morning,” he said. “There were three detangling implements involved, as well as a lemur. I’m honestly not sure what he got out of the whole process, but I can’t say I minded the company.”

“Get,” she said, nudging him out the door, and this was more comfortable, the dynamic they fell into easily. She was the responsible one, the one who had a hold on reality and logic and accountability, and he was the one who dug in his heels when she reasonably tried to kick him out at 6AM because even though she didn’t need to be in until much later, she knew if she let him stay he’d try to talk her into some early morning adventure or favor that would eat her whole day. She knew that her suddenly having an inexplicable, physics-defying ability was not what they did.

“No good night story?” he said, with one last pleading look behind him.

“Maybe tomorrow,” she said, smiling a little to soften the fact that she was about to slam the door. “If you’re very, very good.”

“Oh, I will b–”

The door clicked shut, and there was the muffled noise that was probably Shawn regretting the existence of the tip of his noise. She shook her head, walking towards the bathroom. Changeable though he was, Shawn Spencer could be counted on for certain things.

She shed her clothes as she went, eager to get her day going – she had so much to do, first and foremost doing some experiments with her strength this morning to make double-sure there wouldn’t be any mishaps at work. Nothing had happened since the whole bed incident, but she didn’t think there was any such thing as being too careful with this sort of thing. It was a little disturbing to think about how much raw power she held in her hands; a bit like when she first started carrying a gun, but infinitely worse because there was absolutely no way to know when this would off, there was no safety she could turn on.

Well, not that she knew about yet. But first, there was getting clean, so once she got into the stall she turned it up full blast – she didn’t really have to worry about it warming up, anymore, she found out yesterday, because even at its coldest the shower just felt a little cool and refreshing, not even goosepimple-inducing. She took her time lathering and shampooing, because this was her zen time of day, when she didn’t hurry or think about all the things she needed to get done or do anything but enjoy herself. It was odd, though, because usually she’d _feel_ like she needed a shower and today she didn’t – despite the veritable ton of high-fat and high-grease foods she’d ingested yesterday, her hair wasn’t at all greasy.

Well, it wasn’t a matter of whether she needed to, or not: she wanted to. She felt somewhat recklessly irrational as she lathered up, but she pushed it away. _This is my routine. No reason to change it._

She got out of the shower and toweled herself dry, picking out matching pants and jacket for work. She chose an unobtrusive blouse; she felt like she wanted to blend in more than stand out at the moment. She tied her hair up in a matter-of-fact bun, did a quick lookover in the mirror, and felt ready to face the day.

“See you two tonight,” she said to the cats curled up on the couch. They looked like a pair of furry pillows, and about as conscious. Selina purred some noise that could have been construed as a goodbye.

She was running early, but she figured there was nothing wrong with getting in a half-hour earlier than the usual half-hour early she got in. (Okay, so it was technically an hour early, but she _always_ got in half an hour early, so it wasn’t the same for her.) She had some paperwork to catch up on from yesterday, anyway, and she knew Carlton would probably be there.

Entering the station she discovered she was right, and Carlton was at his desk, already deeply absorbed with studying a file. She’d been worried she was going to feel self-conscious today – secrets always weighed on her, like giant boulders of untruthiness making every interaction awkward. But something about the sight of her partner immediately snapped her back into exactly the mindset she needed and she walked right on over.

“Anything interesting?” she said, peeking over his shoulder.

“O’Hara!” he exclaimed, flailing back in his chair. “For the love of St. Peter’s basset hound, don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“St. Peter had a basset hound?” she said, just to further annoy him.

“Completely irrelevant to the point I’m trying to make.”

“I don’t see how,” she went on, blinking at him with her best _I’m-an-innocent-little-blonde-why-would-you-suspect-me?_ face, “if I’m not sneaking up on you for the love of said hound. It’d be nice to know a little more about it.”

“No,” he said, totally ignoring her, but she saw the twitch at the edge of his mouth and counted it as a small victory, “it’s nothing that concerns you, so you can kindly move along to your own desk and see about tending to all that work you so cavalierly neglected yesterday.”

 _On my sick day, you mean?_ she wanted to say, except she hadn’t really been sick, so the righteousness of that statement would have been a bit marred. Unfortunate. “They’re going to force you to take vacation soon, you know,” she said instead, because it was always satisfying to remind him of that.

“Hmph,” he said, because he knew she was right. Vick had created a regular schedule of enforced vacation on Carlton ever since he’d attained the highest record for weapons’ discharge on a scene in _California._ “What, there are people in other states beating me?” he’d said, and Vick had sent him home for the rest of the day when he didn’t seem to understand that it wasn’t a competition, and no, he certainly wasn’t winning.

“So what did I miss?” she said, settling in to her chair. Ah, it was good to be home.

“A robbery and an assault.”

“And which file are you looking at?” she said, opening up the paperwork for the B&E that she needed to finish writing a report for.

“Neither,” he ground out, picking up the file and holding it up so she could only see the manila outside. “As I said, none of your concern.”

“Oh, Detective Lassiter,” Vick said offhandedly as she cruised by their desks, a stack of files in her hand that she was probably going to drop off at Buzz’s desk, “bring O’Hara in on the missing kid, would you? You’re going to need her.”

“But –”

“I’m already out of earshot,” Vick called back, not even slowing in her walk at all.

“– she was supposed to handle the boring cases _I_ didn’t want.” Carlton finished.

“You know you said that out loud, don’t you?” Juliet said, already planning on rummaging through his desk and stealing all his favorite pencils the next time he went to the bathroom.

“Can’t stop a train once it’s out of the station,” Carlton said, not looking the least bit apologetic. She hadn’t been planning on taking his favorite “Civil War Heroes of the Battle of the Bulge” pencil, but now it looked like she was obligated.

“Yes, well, I also seem to remember the chief mentioning that you’re going to _need_ me on a certain case you were trying to hog all to yourself, so if you’d just kindly hand over the file and put your train back into its very rude station?” she said, sweetly, holding out her hand for delivery.

“I probably would have brought you in on my own,” he grumbled, rolling his chair around and plunking it down in her waiting grip. “After you wrapped those other two up.”

“Yeah, well, looks like Buzz is going to end up with a few more things to take care of.”

“Man’s a workhorse,” Carlton said, admiringly.

“And we love him for it,” Juliet said, but her attention was already on the paperwork in front of her. A teenager named Billy Farnsworth hadn’t been home in two days; his mother had filed the report within hours of his disappearance. In the picture she’d provided of him, he was standing under a tree in a forest, grimacing like he hadn’t wanted it to be taken. His hair was brown, skin tanned, build sturdy and short.

“I see,” Juliet said, everything clicking into place. “You think he ran away.”

“I see no evidence to the contrary,” Carlton said, gesturing at the kid’s records. “He’s no stranger to this place. Citations for paintballing amongst civilians, busted on marijuana possession, caught at five separate parties in the area. He’s a troublemaker. Exactly the type to take to the streets.”

“And you love setting kids like him straight,” Juliet said, filling in the blanks. “Look, Carlton, I’m not saying you’re wrong, but what if he was abducted? If we treat this as a runaway we could be losing valuable time.”

“And if we treat this as an abduction we’re going to be wasting everyone’s time, and I’m not interested in wasting my time on some punk whose idea of a good time is worrying his parents half to death.”

“But there’s a high probability he _was_ involved with some shady characters, and if they have anything to do with his disappearance he’s definitely going to need our help.”

Carlton considered for a second. “You may – emphasis _may_ —have a point. Drug lords can be tough on their kids. But we’re going to need some evidence, because otherwise this is just going to be a wild goose chase. We can’t just knock on every drug dealer’s door and hope they’ve got him stashed.”

“I know,” she said, already trying to come up with ways they could narrow this down. “I’ll start with the contacts she’s listed. Maybe I can narrow it down to known drug associates and follow up there.”

“I’ll check out the homeless shelters,” Carlton said, and she nodded, because they both knew there was no use trying to talk each other out of anything. This was how it went with some cases – they had to go different directions to cover every base, and it worked out well because the case was the only thing that suffered if they got too tunnel-visioned into a certain narrative.

“Meet up for lunch?” she said, already reaching down to grab her thermos and the bag of food she’d brought.

“Noon, the usual spot,” he said, similarly gathering together his things.

“See you then,” she said, walking off towards the back entrance where she could stop by the file room and see if they had more specific records on some of the names listed. She could have just looked at the computer records, but she liked to see the notes previous detectives left in the margins – they could be quite revealing.

“Affirmative,” Carlton called back, heading out towards the front for his car.

She walked back to the file room and felt more settled than she had since she’d had that rude awakening the other night. _This_ was where she was on solid ground, where things made sense. She was presented with a problem and she methodically went about finding every available solution.

She knew there was a reason she’d done so well on that detective’s exam.

“Hey, Lenaya,” she said, stepping up to the window. “Can you run a few names for me, see if we’ve got paper records?”

“Sure thing,” Lenaya said, her fingers hovering over her keyboard, ready. Lenaya was the new in-house archivist/digital researcher, and very young, but she worked databases like no one Juliet had ever seen. Juliet felt positively cosmic when she compared herself to Carlton’s facility with technology – he thought he was about a thousand times better than he actually was – but Lenaya was like grand unified theory, towering above them all.

She read the names off, Lenaya’s fingers flying.

“We’ve got two hits,” Lenaya said, entering in more data. “I’ll be right back.”

She walked back into the archives, appearing moments later with the two files in hand. “Lucky for you, one of these was just returned.”

“I can tell today’s going to be a good day,” Juliet said, grinning. She signed the necessary forms when Lenaya slid them over and took the files with a nod of thanks. “I’ll bring them back as soon as I’m done.”

“I’ll be here,” Lenaya said, her eyes already back on her screen.

Juliet headed for her car, and pulled out a yellow pad as soon as she was inside, eating a sandwich while she worked. She’d gone through two more sandwiches by the time she finished reading, and she had a number of addresses, possible locations to stop by, and telephone numbers she’d call once it was late enough in the morning that she wouldn’t be waking people up. Sometimes it paid to catch people off-guard, but most people seemed grumpier talking to the police at seven in the morning, though she had no idea why. She felt the beginning of the day was the best time to take care of business.

She drove off to the first location, her mind blissfully free of everything but the case’s facts, which she began to commit to memory. _Age: 16, birthdate: 10/14, eyes: green, hair: brown, height: 5’1.”_ She knew she’d never need all the information she stored away, but she also never knew when it would come in handy, and she had always felt that it was like a program – enter all the data and give it some time to process, see what it would generate. She took extra-long showers when she was working hard cases, though ideas annoyingly had the habit of coming more often late at night when she was about to fall asleep. Carlton, luckily, was always awake when she called.

She pulled up to the address and parked, taking a moment after she pulled the key out of the ignition to just sit. She took a breath and smoothed her hands over her suit, surprised at how calm she felt. Then again, maybe that wasn’t so odd. Superpowers or no superpowers, she still had a job to do, and she had no intention of letting a little mind-blowing revelation get in the way of that.

*

Juliet closed the file she’d been perusing, now fully convinced that this kid hadn’t run away. His mother’s extended statement gave Juliet the impression that the kid was basically content with the situation there, and more than a few of his friends mentioned that he’d been acting strange – almost edgy, like he was scared of something – the past few days. Carlton hadn’t had any luck at the shelters and was sure Billy was “shacking up with one of his druggie friends,” so she’d talked him into stopping by those friend’s houses tomorrow while she was going to follow up on some promising leads she’d gotten from her interviews this morning. She had a rough timeline of the last two days before his disappearance and there were a few stops he’d made that struck her as connected to all of this, though how she wasn’t quite sure yet.

Carlton wasn’t yet admitting that this was a kidnapping but he grumbled something about how _maybe_ they could explore other probable causes and she knew that’s as close as he got to saying his supposedly iron-clad assumption hadn’t panned out.

Juliet turned towards her computer and closed down the programs she had open. She shut the system down and started to gather her things together. She had dinner with Gus in an hour and she still needed to fill out that journal he’d sent her before she got there. She’d jotted down a few notes during the day, so it shouldn’t be too hard – she’d used her hearing at every house she stopped by to listen and see if anyone was inside before she bothered knocking, and when she’d had to chase down a robbery suspect her strength had definitely kicked in and she’d run so fast so caught up with him in a second. She’d also recorded all the food she’d eaten, the portions of which sailed well past ridiculous. There was something wrong about listing “ten pounds of loose nuts” under the “snack” heading.

Juggling her three bags, she stood, making her way out of the station.

“Night, detective!” Buzz said, giving her a hearty wave.

“Night, Buzz,” she said, waving back. Normally their positions would be reversed, him waving to her on his way out, but she was already planning on coming in extra early tomorrow and she knew Vick didn’t like it if she wasn’t gone from this place for at least twelve hours once a week.

“Detective,” came Vick’s voice, as if summoned by Juliet’s thoughts. Juliet turned and caught sight of her leaning against the doorframe leading into her office.

“Chief?” Juliet said.

Vick had one of those unreadable expressions on her face. “I trust you’re fully recovered?”

“Uh, yes, I am, yes, fully recovered,” Juliet said, trying not to stammer and mostly failing.

“Good,” Vick said, nodding once, like she’d already known the answer and she was just letting Juliet confirm it for her. “And you… won’t be needing any more sick days?”

“No,” Juliet said definitively. “No, I slept on it, and I feel much better.”

“I see,” Vick said, nodding more slowly this time, like she hadn’t been sure how Juliet would respond to that. “Well, have a good night, detective. We’ll see you in the morning.”

“Night, chief,” Juliet said. “See you in the morning.”

*

Juliet looked at her watch. She waited as the second hand crept up towards the 12, and knocked when it was exactly six o’clock.

“ _Right_ on time,” Gus said with a smile as he opened the door, and she smiled back, pleased to have her punctuality noted and appreciated. “Come on in.”

“It smells amazing, Gus,” Juliet said, and she wasn’t exaggerating in the least. She’d been smelling the simmering spices since she had opened the door to the apartment building. “I brought these, I hope they’re okay,” she said, holding up the wine and the package of flatbread Gus had said she could pick up when she texted him from the store asking if there was anything he needed for the meal.

“Perfect, just set them on the table over there,” he said, and went off to the kitchen. She opened the flatbread package and put the pieces on an empty plate, then went over to get the wine opener out of the drawer where she knew he kept it. She poured them a glass each; she topped hers off very full, because she was still curious whether or not it would have any effect on her.

“You told Shawn, huh?” Gus said, coming back with steaming dishes in his hand.

“How’d you know?” Juliet said, pulling out Gus’ chair for him – he gave her a nod of thanks as he set down the dishes – and then sitting herself down.

“He came over at like six in the morning talking a hundred miles an hour and making no sense,” Gus said, and they began to serve themselves. “Not that that’s weird. But the twitch he got on his face every time he heard your name was.”

Juliet’s lips scrunched up. “That bad?” she said, feeling guilty that she’d been so impulsive about it.

Gus hummed an affirmative as he took his first bite of curry and saffron rice. “I said your name two-hundred and twenty-seven times throughout the course of the day.” He smiled as he chewed, obviously immensely pleased with himself.

Juliet laughed. “Glad I could provide you with a source of entertainment. Also, this?” She gestured to her plate with her fork. “Is _delicious_.” She didn’t know if it was her enhanced taste or Gus’ culinary skills, but there was definitely a party happening in her mouth and she didn’t want it to stop anytime soon.

“Thank you,” Gus said.

“You think he’ll be all right?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Gus said. “He’ll come around.”

Juliet was relieved to hear it; Shawn, although he’d made her life very difficult on more than a few occasions, was still one of her closest friends and she wanted to be able to be honest with him.

They moved onto other topics, and even though Juliet was eating three times as fast as Gus she never ran out of food because apparently he’d been prepared and cooked enough for ten. She smiled to herself when he brought out another bowl of curry; that was one of her favorite things about him, how he was so thoughtful and always paid attention to details.

The wine had a tiny bit of an effect on her, but only when she gulped down a whole glass and it hardly lasted more than thirty seconds. Gus did some mental calculations and estimated that she’d need to drink a gallon or two of vodka to get a really good buzz on. Juliet briefly wondered whether it would be fair to use her accelerated metabolism to outdrink her brothers; the looks on their faces would be priceless.

She helped Gus clear the dishes. Six months ago, he would have protested and made her stay at the table and relax, but she’d worn him down over time and now he didn’t bat an eye. She felt like it was a telling barometer of their friendship that he let her dry and put away dishes.

“So,” she said, putting a plate back in the cabinet. “I had this kinda weird idea.”

Gus looked up from the pan he was scrubbing. He had on the bright yellow gloves and there were little soap bubbles peppering his arms like snowflakes. “Yeah?”

“We have this missing nineteen year old; his mother’s really worried about him. The thing is… ” Juliet hesitated, unsure whether this notion crossed the border over into ridiculous. “She dropped off some clothes this afternoon for the canine unit, but our trainer’s out of town for the next two days. So I was thinking, that, uh…”

Gus’ hands stopped scrubbing. He slowly turned his torso in her direction, his eyes fixing on her. He blinked a few times, expression shifting as the information processed.

“You want to use your SuperSmeller?” Gus said, whispering with something that sounded like awe.

“I was hoping you could give me some tips?” She hazarded, hoping she was reading him right.

“Are you joking?” Gus said, looking at her like he couldn’t believe what she was saying. He turned back to the sink, dropping the scrub brush and starting to peel off his gloves. “After all these years of friendship and my well-known public campaign to promote the underappreciated art of olfactory investigation, and you even have to ask?”

Juliet felt her tensed shoulders relax with relief. She grinned, folding up the dish towel and hanging it on the oven handle. She knew there was a reason he was the first person she’d wanted to tell. “No, I guess not.” 

She filled him in on the generalities of her plan as they drove over to the park where witnesses had last seen Billy. She’d swiped one of the shirts from evidence, which she felt more than a little guilty about, and Gus trying to reassure her that he and Shawn had done much worse didn’t help much. She parked at the west end of the park and they walked over to the approximate area Billy had been hanging out.

The park was mostly empty; it was late enough that all the legitimate park users had gone home, but early enough that most of the illegitimate ones weren’t out yet. There were a few dark figures around the edges where the grass bordered the woods who disappeared when they spotted her and Gus. She let them go; she had other things to worry about right now.

“So,” Juliet said, holding up the ziplock bag. She made sure to situate herself well away from the pools of light underneath the street lamps; she already felt weird enough about doing this, there was no reason to turn it into a spectacle. “Where do I start?”

“See if you can… identify his scent,” Gus said, gesturing at the shirt. “Reduction of other sensory stimuli will help.”

In other words, he wanted her to close her eyes and sniff the shirt. Letting out a half-laugh half-sigh, she closed her eyes. She couldn’t help picturing the canine unit and the way they buried their noses in the objects, but no way was she sticking her nose into some nineteen year old kid’s pit-stained t-shirt.

She tried to clear her mind and focus on her sense of smell. Nothing happened, at first, but gradually everything started to intensify; the scent of the wet grass and soil, the smell of her own shampoo, Gus’ mint-and-tea tree shower gel. She tried to narrow in on the shirt in her hands, and yes, there it was, she could pick up the faint remnants of detergent and –

“Ugh,” she said, almost doubling over when it really hit her. Nausea rose and the smell was so strong – sweat, body oil, deodorant, hundreds of other stray fragrances, all the components that blended together to make the unique signature of Billy Farnsworth – and she could swear she was _tasting_ it and it was way too much, dizziness overwhelming her.

“Take it easy, take it easy,” Gus said, and she felt him take the shirt out of her hands and put a hand on her shoulder. “Just dial it back until it’s manageable.”

Juliet took shallow breaths in through her mouth, and Gus slowly ran his hand up and down her arm, saying, “That’s it, that’s it.”

When she felt steady on her feet again she realized she still had her eyes closed. The scents in the air around her were also becoming much more distinct.

“I’m good,” she said, exhaling slowly. “I’m good. But how do I follow his trail?” The increasing distinction was helping, but there was still a fuzziness in the way she was perceiving things that was making it all seem jumbled-up and confusing, like the scents were a bunch of overlapping lines.

“I want you to focus,” Gus said. “See if you can slowly let all the other scents fall away.”

Juliet let her breathing return to a more normal pace and inhaled in experimentally through her nose. Everything was still flooding in. She kept at it, breathing in and out, trying different approaches as she did so, trying to see what would work and what wouldn’t.

“How’s it going?” Gus asked quietly.

“I can’t –” Juliet frowned. “I can’t seem to separate them out. They’re all tangled up.”

“It’s okay,” Gus said. “Just keep trying.”

She nodded. She tried picking out single scents and focusing on them, but it was like she went into automatic overdrive every time and the strength of the scent would start to overwhelm her and make her feel sick. She tried focusing in on certain areas but there were so many unfamiliar scents that she couldn’t separate out what was relevant from what was background. She started feeling self-conscious because nothing was _happening_ , and Gus had been nice enough to come out here with her, and there had been some part of her that had really believed that between the two of them that they could track him down tonight.

Her head started to feel strange the more she kept at it, like an oncoming headache, and there was a low humming in her ears.

“I think that’s enough for –”

“Just a few more minutes,” she said, trying to push through the cottony feeling in her head. This kid could be in danger _right now_ , and she should be able to do this, she should be able to find him, and she’d figure it out if she just kept at it long enough, she knew it –

“Whoa, Juliet,” Gus said, and Juliet’s eyes flew open; she’d started to stumble, nearly falling. Her reflexes had kicked in before Gus needed to catch her. Not like falling could hurt her, anyway – which was going to take her a long time to get used to – but she could tell from the look on his face that mentioning that wasn’t going to make him feel any better.

“That’s enough for tonight,” Gus said firmly as she straightened up.

“I just need a break,” Juliet said. She pinched the bridge of her nose, breathing slowly. She decided that mentioning the headache would only send Gus into full-on overprotective doctor mode. “Once I clear my head we can try again.”

“Tomorrow morning, maybe,” Gus said. “But not tonight. Tonight, you need to get some rest.”

“I can do this, Gus, I _can_.” Juliet said, some of her exasperation started to leak into her voice. “The canine unit does it all the time. It should be _easier_ for me, otherwise what are these powers even for?”

“Those dogs train go through an entire training program, Juliet,” Gus said, gently. “You’ve only been at this for twenty minutes.” 

“Yeah, but…” she sighed. When he put it like that it was hard to come up with any logical counterarguments, even though she still _felt_ like she should be able to do something.

“Come on,” Gus said, putting an arm around her shoulder. “We’ll try again first thing in the morning, okay?” 

She let him lead her to the car without answering.

*

Gus insisted on walking her up; it was one of the few times she’d wished he were less polite, less perceptive and would have just left her alone. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the sentiment, but the last thing she wanted right now was company. The cats, however, were overjoyed to see him and instantly twined around his ankles like they never wanted to let him leave again.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked, throwing down her purse and heading to the fridge. “Water, tea?” She didn’t bother offering coffee because she knew he had a strict no-caffeine-after-3:30pm policy. She pulled out a jug of orange juice and unscrewed the top, tilting her head back and taking a long sip.

“Just water, thanks,” Gus said, scratching Selina under the chin and cooing at her. Barbara headbutted his other hand and yowled.

After getting him the glass of purified water, Juliet moved her blankets so they could sit side by side on the couch. The cats draped themselves along the back of the couch. She smiled a little to herself, realizing that she was essentially inviting Gus to sit on her bed right now. She decided not to mention it, not because she thought he’d take it the wrong way, but because there was a chance she wanted him to take it the wrong way and that so wasn’t where things needed to go tonight.

They sat in silence. Juliet gave up on sipping the orange juice after awhile and chugged the whole thing down, screwing the lid closed and tossing the empty carton on the floor. This wasn’t like her, she knew – she took things in stride, she made the best of situations. But she was also wasn’t the kind of person who failed miserably at things, she was the kind of person who was _competent_ and did well on all her tests and always knew the right thing to do and this, this wasn’t how things went for her.

“How are you feeling?” Gus ventured.

Juliet leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees and dropping her forehead into the palms of her hands. “Like I could use a gallon of vodka right about now.”

“Headache?” he asked.

“How’d you know?” she said, pressing her index finger to the center of her forehead. She wasn’t sure if the gesture was helping eliminate the pressure or not, but it felt better to be trying something, at least. She suspected Tylenol wasn’t going to do the trick anymore.

“Physical side-effects after an overexertion are common,” Gus said.

“Oh,” she said, and somehow that made her feel even worse, that she’d essentially done this to herself.

“You just gotta give yourself some time,” Gus said, softly, and one of his hands came to rest on her back. “You’re gonna get better at this.”

She leaned back against the couch, sighing. She looked over at him. “You sure?” she said, feeling silly for saying it out loud, but Gus smiled at her in a way that made her feel less silly.

“I have faith in you, Juliet,” Gus said, and Juliet couldn’t help smiling back at him because there were times that his whole transparency thing led to times like this, where she knew without a doubt that he was completely sincere.

She leaned over, dropping her head onto his shoulder. “Thanks, Gus,” she said.

He reached over and slipped his hand into hers. “Anytime,” he said.

“I’m just gonna…” Juliet yawned. “I’m just gonna close my eyes for a minute.” The light was too bright – it was hurting her eyes, which was making her head pound even worse, and Gus’ shoulder was surprisingly comfortable.

“Good idea,” Gus said, his thumb stroking over her wrist. _That feels nice,_ she thought, and sometime after Barbara started purring into the back of Juliet’s neck she fell asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

When Juliet woke up, she was still holding Gus’s hand. She was floating in a half-lying down half-seated position; Gus’s hand was the tether keeping her attached to the ground.

She smiled to herself a little. That seemed pretty appropriate for how things were right now, actually.

She lowered herself slowly, careful not to disturb him. He had slumped back against the couch, his head tucked adorably into his shoulder. He snuffled a little when she set down, but didn’t wake. Selina was a curled up ball of happiness in his lap and Barbara had taken up residence on his chest.

Something about the sight of Gus cuddling with her cats in her apartment just made last night’s disaster seem far away. With a slight pang of regret, she slipped her hand out of his. (Maybe there was a little caressing right at the end there. _But_ , she was the only one awake, so no witnesses meant it didn’t count.) She very quietly got up, went into her room and got changed. There was a plan forming in her mind, and it involved chocolate chip pancakes and in some small measure paying back Gus for the amazing friend he’d been the last two days.

Walking into the kitchen, the first thing she did was grab five protein bars and inhaled them, preemptively trying to address the new bottomless pit that had taken place of her stomach. She washed them down with three protein shakes.

Bending down to open the cabinet, she flinched. There was still a dull ache pressing behind her eyes. She breathed out and moved a little more slowly, rummaging around to find the flour, chocolate chips, and vanilla extract. Her rashness last night wasn’t as acutely embarrassing in the light of the morning, but she still wasn’t particularly happy about how things had gone.

She also knew that she knew better. She’d done the same thing on more than one occasion – back when she’d run cross country, she’d once pushed herself so hard she fainted. She’d also had her fair share of sprains and pulled muscles, and doctors telling her sternly that she had to watch how much weight she was adding on at the gym. There was always this voice inside her, _come on, you can do better than this, just a little more won’t kill you_ , and she knew that she had to watch herself.

Trying to approach these new powers with that attitude would probably do her a lot more damage than good. Last night she’d been so determined to keep going, and what would have happened? What if she’d ended up with more than a headache? How sick could she make herself if she didn’t watch it? How could she do anyone any good if she was completely out of commission?

Stirring the batter, she sighed. Even now, there was a part of her thinking that she should get the shirt and try again. That she should simply shake it off and keep on. There was a part of her that simply wanted to barrel through the logic, which refused to accept the wisdom of what she knew was right.

She remembered how hard she had tried when she was younger, how she’d always wanted to prove that she could keep up with her brothers. And later, the fastest runners on the cross country team, the other leading candidates for valedictorian. She remembered when she arrived here in Santa Barbara, how desperate she’d been for them to take her seriously, how much she’d needed to show them that she wouldn’t hold anyone back, no matter her age or her inexperience.

She pulled boxes of strawberries and blueberries out of the fridge, putting them in a colander to rinse. She looked around her apartment. She let her eyes wander over the familiar photos: her brothers, her parents, and the few but precious friends she had here in Santa Barbara. On the next shelf was her trophy collection, though no one else looking at it would know. She kept all the trophies and awards in unmarked boxes. (She didn’t want to seem full of herself. She could never understand why some people felt the need to flaunt things like that. Carlton had practically tattooed his Distinguished Service Medal onto his forehead.) They filled the entire shelf; there wasn’t an inch left for anything else.

She shook her head, smiling a little. That was a younger Juliet who’d earned and coveted all that. Not that it didn’t mean anything to her any more – she was proud of who she was and where she’d come from – but she’d begun to realize that there was more to her than that. Now she’d be able to run laps around the fastest Olympic runners, or wrestle down the strongest criminal. What was happening to her was beyond her wildest dreams.

And she realized, with a moment of intense clarity, that she wouldn’t have been ready before. She wouldn’t have been able to resist the temptation; she would have done far worse than what she did last night. She had finally reached a point in her life where she was ready to start doing something solely for the good of it, not the glory of it. And she knew that what she hadn’t liked about last night had been the lack of glory.

She set the table, putting a few flowers in a vase. The spread looked delectable – chocolate chip pancakes, fresh-squeezed orange juice (she was in love with her new grip strength), hand-whipped whip cream, and a colorful fruit salad.

She stood there for a moment. Everything that had been clattering around in her mind slowly came to rest, settled down. She knew what she needed to do. Satisfied, she went to wake Gus.

Gus must have been exhausted; he slept through the entire breakfast preparation process. She would bet good money that he’d been staying up late doing research to develop more tests and drills for her, and to find equipment that would help them monitor her physical state. (She’d also bet good money that he’d spent at least some of that time reading some of those Wonder Woman comics she’d seen out on his coffee table. This was Gus, after all.)

“Time to get up, sleeping beauty,” Juliet said, tapping Gus gently on the shoulder.

“Stop licking me, Mr. Snuggles,” Gus said, sleepily scrunching his face up as Barbara bestowed upon him the greatest sign of her affection, cat grooming. Her sandpaper tongue made a rasping sound as it went over his cheek. Then he opened his eyes, blinking. “Juliet?” He sat up, rubbing his head. “What happened?”

“We were so exhausted we just passed out on the couch,” she said, handing him a glass of water. He took it with an appreciative noise, taking a sip. “I decided to let you sleep in. There’s breakfast, if you’re hungry.”

Gus inhaled, his nose rising in the air as if elevated by the scent. “Juliet, that smells amazing.”

Juliet smiled. “Let’s hope it tastes as good.”

They sat across from each other, the cats standing guard at their feet just in case a stray crumb fell. Gus laid his napkin neatly in his lap and proceeded to pour precisely striped maple syrup, and then he started to cut up his pancake into perfect bite sized pieces. He was softly humming as he did it, a pleased sound, like he was already anticipating how delicious the first bite would be. It was a delight to see him enjoying the meal she’d prepared, especially after he’d done this for her so many times. Juliet felt a pleasant warmth as she watched him.

“I’m going to see if we can request a tracking dog from a nearby department,” Juliet said, sipping her orange juice. “I went too far last night and I don’t think I’ll be able to do it, and I don’t want us to lose any time finding this kid.”

Gus paused with a piece of pancake halfway to his mouth. He set the fork down, looking confused.

“What?” She said, wondering if she’d said something to upset him.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Gus said, shaking it off, his face quickly returning to normal. “Just, after last night, I thought you’d want to try again today.” He looked a bit sheepish when he added, “I was sure I was going to have to talk you out of it.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, and his reaction was only cementing the resolve she’d reached earlier, “I think I need to learn to start talking myself out of it before I go that far. Maybe if I’d stopped earlier last night I would have been able to try again today.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. This is all really new, and it’s just gonna take awhile to get used to, that’s all.” Gus said.

“We’ll take it more slowly from now on,” Juliet said, giving him a reassuring smile, knowing she meant it. She picked up her utensils, gesturing at him. He still hadn’t even managed to get his first bite into his mouth. “Anyway, eat – it’s going to get cold.”

But instead of eating, he raised the fork to his nose. He closed his eyes for a second, inhaling with the slow savor that most reserved for fine wine. “Hmm, let’s see... cinnamon, cloves, vanilla. And just a hint of orange zest.”

Juliet laughed, pleased. He was spot on, down to her mother’s secret ingredient. “How long did it take you to be able to do that?” Juliet asked, taking a bite of her fruit salad.

“Depends how you look at it. It’s a Guster family tradition, we did it at practically all our meals. Like riding a bike.” Gus explained. “But for more complicated stuff, I had to practice. I really started getting into it when Shawn talked me into opening up Psych with him. You never know what information will help solve a case, you know?”

She nodded, thinking of the many times she’d seen them prove that. “So you’ve worked to develop it further?”

“Oh, definitely,” Gus said. “Shawn’s dad has helped me a lot, actually. I’ll put on a blind fold and he’ll open up bottles with different compounds in them, and once I’ve got them down we move on to the next set. I’m pretty close to finishing up with common chemical compounds, and pretty soon we’re going to move onto women’s perfumes and men’s colognes.”

She felt a swell of admiration for Gus. It was something understated about him, something she thought most people didn’t see – he had a dedication to his work that went above and beyond.

“I guess I’ll be tagging along to Henry’s house with you pretty soon,” she said. She let the admiration flavor her tone. “Since I want to learn from the best.”

“Oh, well, you know, I don’t know about the _best_ ,” Gus said, his humility slightly exaggerated in that way he had, where even as he was saying the humble words his chest was puffing up, “there’s a woman in Vermont that can identify detergents down to the brand at twenty paces. But, you know,” he swiped his thumb over his nostril, “for the greater Southern California region I am considered something of an authority.”

“I know I’m in good hands,” she said, smiling.

“You know that’s right,” he said, smiling back.

They settled into companionable silence, and Juliet was forced to look down at her plate because she couldn’t seem to stop smiling as long as she was looking at him.


	4. Chapter 4

“Again?” Juliet said, wondering when her life had become her own personal version of Extreme Superheroine: Training Edition. The Gus she had once known had been replaced by this man with a stopwatch in one hand, a clipboard in the other, and a whistle she was pretty sure he’d just bought because he liked how it looked when it bounced off his pectorals. (Or maybe that last part was her. But still. He didn’t need to use it with such _glee._ )

Gus just looked at her, eyebrows expressively raised and holding up his stopwatch expectantly.

 _This is going to be a long day,_ she thought, and picked the barbell up again. She couldn’t believe how many sets she’d done with this thing already. Last week, even thinking about deadlifting this much would have seemed beyond impossible to her. Amazing how quickly things could change.

Up, down, up, down, up, down – she was going so far that she could see Gus’s head bobbing up and down madly trying to count her reps. He let her go for a few minutes, nearly blew her ear drums out with that whistle of his, and then it was time for running drills.

Now, this, she liked. She’d always loved running, ever since high school. Back then, she’d loved cross country – the long winding trails up and down the mountain, the fresh air and the feeling of euphoria that usually kicked in for her around the forty-five minute mark. There was something very meditative about it for her. Studying had always been a breeze after a good run, and as an adult she often got her best ideas for cases working her way up the top of a mountain. She hadn’t been much of a sprinter, though. She’d never quite gotten the appeal of it, honestly. Instead of rhythmic and steady, it seemed explosive and choppy, the opposite of what appealed to her.

Now, however, sprinting was an entirely different experience.

She crouched down, lining herself up with her fingertips on the ground and her butt in the air. She focused her gaze on the white line that marked the 100 meter mark. Breathing out, she purposefully dialed her hearing down a notch because she knew what was coming, was waiting for Gus, who had the stopwatch raised and the whistle already on his lips –

_There._

It blew, and she _took off_. She didn’t even know how to process the sensation, really. She imagined that this was what it would feel like to be a plane, with a sudden burst of propulsion moving you forward so fast that it’s almost as if you simply bypass the air molecules themselves. She got the appeal of sprinting now: the incredible sensation of power, the utter focus and concentration it took to engage every part of the body in pursuit of that white line. There was no room for distraction, no room for anything else but the singleminded pursuit. The balls of her feet skimmed the track and she came upon the line so quickly it seemed to rush towards her; one stride, two, five, _across_.

The whistle blew slightly late; Gus’s eyes were still slightly behind her speed. She walked over to him.

“Take .2 seconds off,” she said, because her job was to estimate the lag in his timing.

Gus nodded, scribbling on his clipboard. He shook his head, exhaling. “Damn, Juliet. _Damn._ ”

“What?” She said curiously, leaning to peer over his shoulder. It was all written in Gus-code, though, so most of it she couldn’t decipher. She smiled at the small sketch of a penguin with tap shoes and a top hat in the corner of the page.

“The world record for the one hundred meter is 9.58 seconds.” Gus said. He slowly looked up from the page and made eye contact with her. “Your average so far is 0.97 seconds.”

“Wow,” Juliet said, letting that sink in for a second. 

“And that’s just sprinting,” Gus said. “What about if you really built up some momentum?”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” She said, starting to smile.

“That you’re going to turn back time Superman style and change the results of yesterday’s betrayal of an American Duos finale for me?” Gus said, and she laughed, because she loved how they were so in sync like this, down to remembering the same scenes from the same movies they’d grown up watching.

“Of course, I may run the risk of getting stuck in a Groundhog Day loop,” she said, mock solemn.

“Guess that makes me Andie MacDowell,” Gus said brightly. Then he blinked, as if realized what him being cast in that role would imply. “I mean, uh, not that, you know, I would make any presumptions about, uh, that –”

“You’d make a great Andie MacDowell,” Juliet said, a tingling warm feeling stirring in the pit of her stomach.

“Well, you know, I, not that I’d, I’d be honored, to, you know, really, uh…” Gus trailed off, looking as if his brain were simply flailing the words out in the hope that some of them would make sense.

“Anyway,” she said, taking pity on him and re-focusing on the goal at hand, “I bet I can get that time down to 0.8 seconds if I really try.”

They got back to it, and once he got the whistle back into his mouth, Gus was back to his drill training sergeant mode. They did another ten sprints, and with just a little extra push she was able to get her average down to 0.87 seconds.

“Hey, Gus,” she said, bent over after her last attempt. She actually felt winded – that hadn’t happened with any of the other drills they’d done today. She reached up and touched her forehead. Her hand came away soaked. She blinked. “I think I broke a sweat on that last one.” This had been the first time since all this had started that she’d sweated.

Gus rushed over. He put a hand on her upper back. “What physical sensations are you experiencing? Any pressure, lightheadedness, nausea?”

“My stomach doesn’t feel so good,” she said, and it growled loudly to punctuate her point.

“Sit down. There you go, slowly.”

She followed his instructions, her head spinning a little as she did so.

“Wait here,” Gus said, and jogged over to where he had all their gear. He picked up the large black duffel bag he’d brought with him and jogged back.

“Here,” he said, handing her a fistful of protein bars he’d pulled out.

“Oh, thank God,” she said, tearing through the foils madly and stuffing them in her mouth. After the first one, one of her unofficial superpowers kicked in: speed eating. Not the most glamorous of the list, but there it was. The remaining five bars were demolished within seconds.

“Any more in there?” She said, eyeing the bag hopefully.

“Let’s go to the car, I’ve got a case in there.” He tossed the duffel bag over his shoulder and offered her his hand to get up. She took it, standing.

As they were walking he handed her a gallon of spring water. She drank it down as she walked, not even pausing. She sat in the passenger seat and he grabbed the case from his trunk, sitting in the driver’s seat.

“Gus,” she said, around the bites of the peanut-butter chocolate goodness. She chewed more slowly so she could talk. “Is this my Kryptonite?”

Gus looked very thoughtful. “It might be. We’re going to need to do a lot more tests before I can be sure, but it would make sense. You’re expending a lot more energy, and you need a lot more fuel. When your fuel runs low, your body lets you know.”

She nodded. “That makes sense. During cross country season I’d be hungry all the time.”

Gus watched her for a moment, his lips pinched and an expression in his eyes she wasn’t familiar with. He reached to the backseat and handed her a towel, which she gratefully accepted and used to pat her face and neck dry.

“How are you feeling?”

She smiled brightly, taking a chug of her water. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll be ready to shave more off that time.”

Instead of the reassuring effect she’d been hoping for, Gus’ expression fell even further, and he broke eye contact. “I – no, not today, you gotta take some time to recuperate.”

“Hey, Gus,” she said, reaching out and putting a hand over his. “I’m fine, really. This isn’t actually like Krytonite, it’s not going to kill me. It just means I should probably look into buying a controlling share in a protein bar company, that’s all.” She smiled softly, stroking her thumb over the back of his palm.

“Yeah, but here I was, telling you to be careful, and then I’m the one that gets carried away, you know, excited to see what you can do, thinking you're invulnerable and…” Gus exhaled, turning his hand up in hers and grasping at her palm. He raised his eyes to meet hers, and there was such stark sincerity there that Juliet felt an answering clench in her throat. “I didn’t like seeing you like that, Jules, and I’m so sorry.”

“I know,” she said, squeezing his hand back, careful not to exert too much pressure. “And you really don’t have anything to apologize for. How about we call it a day here and go get a real lunch? We can start again fresh tomorrow.”

“Okay, Jules.” Gus’ answering smile was tentative but growing, and such a welcome sight. The weight in her throat slowly uncoiled as she saw his expression return to normal. “You wanna see _Age of Ultron_ again after lunch?”

“Sounds like the perfect evening,” she said, relieved, settling back in the chair. She felt her heart beating in her ears as she watched him drive, a totally different sensation from when she’d been running.

*

“So what’ll it be tonight?” Juliet said, walking into Gus’ apartment and taking off her coat. “Juggling sixty-eight balls in the air while hopping on one foot? Floating on my head for an hour? Running faster than a speeding bullet?”

“None of the above,” Gus said, opening the takeout containers. They’d both been so busy this past week that cooking had been out of the question; squeezing in even these hours was a small miracle. “Tonight’s charting the outlying ranges of your aural processing. But have you seriously run faster than a speeding bullet?” he said, looking at her over his shoulder, his tone implying that if she _could_ , she’d definitely been holding out on him at the track.

“I haven’t tried,” Juliet said. She sat down, breaking a pair of chopsticks and grabbing the chow mein. As she was serving herself the noodles she wondered what she would do if someone were shooting at Carlton. It wasn’t really a question: if there were any way she could get in front of the bullet, she’d do it, secret superpowers or no.

“Let’s hope you don’t need to,” Gus said, and she knew he’d put two and two together about the likelihood of someone innocent being shot at on her job. “But we may want to try it out just in case.”

“Just what my weekend was missing,” Juliet said, wryly, “an entire afternoon devoted to taking projectiles in the chest.”

Gus made a sympathetic noise. He shook his head a little, looking grim, no doubt realizing that he was going to be the one firing the gun in this scenario. “You think Wonder Woman ever had it this hard?”

Juliet inhaled about a pound of chow mein noodles; Gus was used to her enhanced-metabolism manners by now, thank goodness. She chewed them thoughtfully, remembering all the afternoons after school that she’d spent reading the issues over and over again. As a child, she never would have believed that being a superheroine could be anything less than constantly glamorous. Suddenly, she knew the answer. “Off-panel? Definitely.”

Gus considered that for a moment. “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “That sounds about right.”

“And if I ever have a costume, you can bet it’s going to cover way more skin than that,” Juliet said, because putting on spandex to work on a dance routine was one thing, but fighting crime was something else. “Though those boots were pretty great.”

Gus nodded, grinning, no doubt savoring the image of Wonder Woman’s legs. Then something in his expression shifted, like he’d just remembered something and he immediately wished he hadn’t.

“What?” Juliet said, grabbing three more potstickers.

“Oh, uh, it’s just, uh.” Gus’ eyes skittered away from hers. “Um.”

“Gus, what?” she said, eyebrows furrowing. Gus being nervous made her nervous.

Gus looked up. He seemed to reach some decision and pursed his lips with the same sort of grim determination he got when it was time to rip off a band-aid. “Can I just preface this by saying that it wasn’t my intention to presume? Because it wasn’t, I promise you, Juliet. I, just… I couldn’t help recalling our previous discussions on the matter and then that in combination with some ideas I had about materials that would help enhance your abilities, well, you know how it is, you’re stuck in a car for four hours because Shawn is convinced some dude in a treehouse in Santa Cruz knows something about something and I just started taking this PhotoShop class and one thing leads to another and –”

Juliet held out her hand to stop him. “Gus,” she said. “First things first. Take a breath.”

Gus inhaled about a paragraph’s worth of deprived oxygen.

“Good.” she said. She mentally sifted through what he’d said, teasing out the threads of actual meaning. It clicked into place. She smiled. Leave it to Gus to get so nervous about trying to help her out. “You came up with some costume designs?”

“A few?” As she kept smiling at him, he seemed to relax. “But they’re rough. Really rough. Nowhere near ready.”

“I’d love to see them when they are ready,” she said.

“Yeah?” Gus said, his face brightening like the sun had just come out specifically to shine on him.

“Absolutely,” Juliet said. She’d probably never tell him this, but she’d done a few doodles of him as The Green Lantern. (And just because she didn’t want to wear spandex didn’t mean she had any compunction against drawing it on him. It would be a shame to hide all that lovely muscle definition.) She blinked to bring herself back from that distracting image. “I’m really looking forward to it.”

“Great, great,” he said, bouncing his head in that excited bobblehead-esque way that he had that she found adorable beyond words. “I’ll try to get them together in the next week or two.”

“No rush,” she said, grabbing a box of fried rice and digging in.

After that the conversation switched to work. Juliet discussed the latest case she was working on; Psych had a private case they were busy with so she didn’t need to worry that Shawn was going to pester Gus for the details. They were investigating a confusing homicide where the killer had deliberately planted a huge number of forensic false leads at the scene and it was taking the labs forever to sort through everything. Juliet’s eye for spotting clues had definitely improved – she was able to pick out hairs at forty feet – but that only helped on the cases where the hairs were actually _relevant_.

“We’ve got some guy who thinks Big Foot abducted his brother-in-law, the same brother-in-law who regularly disappears for weeks at a time with no explanation,” Gus said, rolling his eyes. “But as long as his checks don’t bounce, Shawn can hike around the woods with him wearing female dog pheromones as much as he wants, I don’t care.”

“You didn’t really,” Juliet said. “Dog pheromones? You let him?”

“Don’t even get me started on the Chewbaca footie pajamas,” Gus said, somehow managing to look put-upon and not at all like he most likely put the idea of the pheromones into Shawn’s head in the first place.

“Burton Guster,” she said, chuckling, “you’re kind of an evil genius, you know that?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, but the way he was almost-smiling told her everything she needed to know.

“Yeah, well,” she said, starting to gather up the empty takeout containers so she could nest them together and throw them out, “I’m just glad you’re on my side.”

After they ate their fortune cookies and finished cleaning up Gus pulled out a small stereo. “Want to get started?” He asked, and she nodded, sitting down on the couch.

She rested her hands loosely on her thighs and began to slow her breathing. She spent a few minutes just settling in, quieting her mind; it was easier to tune into her senses when she wasn’t distracted. She let her eyes close and focused on the sounds in the room – the hum of the refrigerator machinery; Gus’ rhythmic breathing and heartbeat; the gentle creaking of the water moving through pipes.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m ready. What do I do?”

“Signal when the recording becomes unintelligible,” he said, and she nodded. The signal they’d developed for this type of thing was for her to raise her index finger; it was less disruptive to her concentration if she didn’t have to speak.

A button clicked and a voice recording came on. It sounded like a lecture, a woman discussing a medical condition she’d never heard of, so she just focused on whether or not she was able to discern words rather than trying to absorb the meaning. The recording started to speed up incrementally, but it wasn’t until it doubled in speed that she had to make an effort to distinguish individual words.

Another ten minutes in, she felt her forehead furrowing and she strained just to the point of feeling it in her head, but then the words were running together so fast they were nonsense. She raised her index finger. Then she relaxed again, easing off. She was becoming familiar with the feeling of the boundary between what was the equivalent of flexing her powers and what was the equivalent of straining them, and she was trying to stay conscious not cross over.

She opened her eyes again. “How I’d do?” she said, watching him as she scribbled down notes. Someday she was going to get her hands on that notebook and see what he was putting in there.

“Impressive,” Gus said, whistling softly as he looked at the readout on a gadget he’d hooked up the stereo. “Very impressive.”

“I think I’m ready for the distance exercises,” she said. When she and Gus had been generating this portion of her training regimen, she'd specifically designed the exercises out of some instinct she couldn't quite put words to yet. The past few days she'd been practicing at the station, listening for voices and heartbeats across the building, and it felt like it came to her more naturally than her other senses. She'd always been the kind of person who never forgot a voice.

“How about Wednesday?” Gus said. “Early, before traffic starts?”

“Can’t wait,” she said.

They wrapped up finalizing where and when they were going to meet on Wednesday. Juliet gathered up her stuff to go, because she knew Gus still had some work to do tonight and she had a few errands to run before bed. She was also hoping to get to sleep at a reasonable hour, something that had been taking the backseat to everything else lately. The thought of curling up with Selina and Barbara and a hot cup of tea sounded really perfect right now.

“Hey,” she said when she was standing in the doorway. She wanted to – well, she wanted to do something other than standing here not quite knowing what to do. She’d gotten to the point where she couldn’t keep pretending with herself, anymore, even if she had no idea what the next step was.

She forged ahead, anyway. “Thanks again, Gus. For all this. Everything you've been doing. You’ve been so great.”

“Don’t even mention it,” Gus said, slipping his hands right hand into his pocket and ducking his head like the praise embarrassed him.

“No, really,” she said, and on impulse she reached out, grabbing his free hand in her own. “I don’t know how I could have gotten through this without you.”

“No, not even, it was my –”

And somehow Juliet’s impulses got away from her, because instead of letting him finish his sentence she stood on her toes and gave him a peck on the cheek. When she stepped back, his mouth was hanging half-open like it had paused mid-sentence and his eyes were saucer-wide.

“So seven o’clock, Wednesday, then,” Gus said, vacantly, like the lights were on but no one was home.

“Seven o’clock,” Juliet repeated, and turned on her heel and walked down the hallway before she could do anything else unexpected. She figured she’d pretty much filled her quota for awhile in that department. She couldn’t help continuing to keep her ears open as she walked, though, and she could hear that he hadn’t shut the door, yet, and she thought she could feel him looking at her as she made her way towards the elevator.

She rounded the corner and pressed the down button. She watched the buttons light up as the elevator ascended.

“Seven o’clock,” she heard Gus whisper from where he was still standing in front of his door, his voice that way it got sometimes when his brain was on a slight delay in the conversation and he was just catching up, “see you then.”

“Night, Gus,” she whispered back with a smile, the elevator doors slipping closed behind her.

*

The couch and her cats proved to be just as comforting as she’d envisioned. Her mug of chamomile steamed in her hands and she settled back against the cushions, sighing. Selina was a purring ball of happy in her lap and Barbara was sprawled out over Juliet’s feet, stretched out like she owned the couch.

She tried to relax into the quiet of the moment but it was difficult. Her head was swirling with thoughts. She’d had more than a few sleepless nights since this happened, wondering _why_ this had happened to her of all people. Had this potential always been inside her? Was there some reason it was happening now? She and Gus had tossed around some theories – maybe it was environmental, random genetic mutation, maybe she was just one of many people out there this was happening to – but there wasn’t any way to really know for sure. She liked the idea of the last the best; it would be nice to know other people who were trying to sort this all out, too. (Okay, so maybe she’d spent a _few_ minutes fantasizing about what it might be like to be part of a superpowered team. What? You couldn’t blame a girl for lingering a little on the notion.)

She’d just about chewed off her entire thumbnail down to nothing when her phone rang. She reached over, picking it up, and was surprised to see it was her mother calling. It was pretty late back home and her mother was the type who nodded off halfway through Jay Leno’s monologue. Juliet felt a brief flash of guilt when she contemplated letting it go to voicemail; she usually called home every other day to check in with her folks, even if it was only for a few minutes. She'd been stretching it lately because she hated keeping them out of the loop like this, but she was still trying to figure out the right way to tell them, how she was going to explain all this.

“Hey, mom,” she answered, because the guilt of not-answering was worse than the guilt of evading the _so how was your day?_ question.

“I can’t sleep,” her mother said, sounding displeased. Juliet could hear Leno in the background, halfway through some interview. That explained her mother’s crankiness – it was a quirk of hers that she hated the interviews as much as she loved the monologue. “Your father tried to sing me a lullaby, can you imagine? He thinks a good song will fix anything.”

Juliet smiled. That was her father, all right. He had a tune for every occasion and an occasion for every tune. “Warm milk?” she suggested.

“I threw a splash in the rum,” her mother said, and Juliet laughed. “A little cinnamon, too, just for some flair.”

“Mmmmm,” Juliet said, petting Selina’s head and snuggling down into her blankets. “Haley’s already in bed?” Her ten-year old niece was visiting them for a few weeks. 

“Yeah,” her mother said, her voice softening. “It’s been nice have her here. She reminds me of you at that age.”

 _A bookworm with a thing for memorizing penal codes?_ Juliet almost asked, but she knew what her mother really meant. Haley was mature for her age, just like Juliet had always been. “Sean and Deirdre said they’d bring her out here in the summer. I can’t wait to show her around the station.”

“Oh, she’ll love that,” her mother said, “she’s always going on about how she wants to be just like her auntie Juliet when she grows up.”

“Aw, mom,” Juliet said, because her mother knew that comments like that made her go all gooey inside.

“Not that you had _any_ ulterior motive in sending her those Nancy Drew books,” her mother said, sounding like she found this whole thing eminently amusing. 

“Mom! You said those were a good idea for a Christmas present.” Juliet had loved them growing up and thought Haley might, too. “I wasn’t trying to make her feel pressur–”

“Don’t be silly,” her mother interrupted. “Of course they were a good idea; she’s read them cover to cover. I’m saying it’s _good_ that she has you to look up to.”

“I just–”

“Now accept the compliment like a good daughter and say thank you,” her mother went on, barreling right over Juliet’s attempts at flustered explanation.

Juliet scrunched her lips up. “Thank you,” she said exaggeratedly, in the fond put-upon tone she reserved especially for her mother.

“Speaking of visits, have you gotten your tickets yet?”

“Yesterday, as a matter of fact,” Juliet said. “I’ll forward you guys the itinerary.”

“Amelia and Duncan are thinking of coming out, too.”

“Really? That’d be great.” It had been years since she’d seen her cousins; she kept up with them through e-mail and Facebook, but nothing compared to a face-to-face visit. Though she wasn’t sure if their presence would make it easier or harder to talk to her parents about what was going on with her. _By the way, I seem to have spontaneously developed super powers. Pass the potatoes?_ didn’t seem like the appropriate way to go about it. She had another month to rehearse, though, so hoped she’d come up with something good by then.

“And your father’s trying to talk your brothers into coming out,” her mother said. “It might even turn into an impromptu reunion.”

“Oh, wow,” she said, a sinking feeling in her stomach. There was no way she could tell her parents and not tell her brothers. She'd been planning to, anyway. She'd just been hoping she could... stagger it a bit more.

"Well don't sound so excited," her mother said, a frown in her voice.

"No, no, it's not that," Juliet said. "Sorry. I, just... I'm a little stressed, that's all."

"Hey, hey, hey," her mother said, voice softening. "What's going on? Talk to me, honey."

Juliet closed her eyes. She wanted to, she really did, but she knew that the phone wasn't the way to do this, and she knew she wanted to get a better handle on this before telling anyone else.

She took a breath and settled onto something she could talk about, even if she was going to leave some of the details out. "I was working this case a little while ago, a kidnapping, and I thought that I'd... figured out a way to find the teenager, but it turned up nothing. I felt pretty foolish."

"Oh, sweetie," her mother said, in that same tone she'd used when Juliet had come home inconsolable because of a B+ she'd gotten on a test, “you're a great detective. One mix up doesn't change that."

"I know," Juliet said, because she did, but she couldn't deny that it was still nice to hear. "And the SAR dog and his trainer tracked him down as soon as they got back into town, so that's really what matters."

"I'm glad they found him," her mother said. 

"Me, too," Juliet said. It had been such a relief to deliver good news to his mother.

"And you're _still_ a great detective."

"I got it," Juliet said.

"An _amazing_ detective."

"Okay, okay, I—"

"The _best_ there ever wa—"

"Thank you!" Juliet relented, because she knew her mother could and would do this all night. She’d inherited her mother’s stubborn streak, yes, but she suspected the genes had gotten diluted somewhere amidst all that chromosomal chaos and she knew better than to keep fighting against the woman who was somehow both the immovable mass and the unstoppable force simultaneously.

“That’s more like it,” her mother said, and Juliet could hear it as she tipped back her glass of rum and milk and finished it off. “Well, don’t let me keep you. I know you have work early in the morning.”

“You’re not keeping me,” Juliet said. “I’m glad you called.” She promised herself she’d call her parents tomorrow night for a real talk.

“The milk and listening to Carrot Top drone on like he has anything interesting to say knocked me out, anyway.” Juliet heard the television click off and her mother get off the couch.

“But you’re really all right?” her mother asked, her footfalls padding up the stairs.

“I am,” Juliet said. Odd, that even though she hadn’t discussed any of the specifics she still felt better, like a weight was lifted off her chest.

“And we’ll talk more soon?” her mother prodded, the last word getting drawn out as she yawned.

“You read my mind,” Juliet said. “Tomorrow night.”

“Good,” her mother said, yawning one more time. Juliet wished she could give her mother a hug, but she supposed sending the thought would have to suffice until her visit.

“Night, mom. Talk soon.”

“Night, sweetie. Sweet dreams.”

Juliet set the phone down on her coffee table and burrowed back into the blankets with the cats. She drifted off slowly, her thoughts trailing off into a quiet murmur.

*

Juliet sighed, closed her eyes, and began. Long slow inhale through her nostrils. Hold and slowly release the breath. Then, when she could feel her pulse in her ears, she allowed that feeling to expand – 

There. She could hear the footfalls on the ground. The sound of fabric against bodies. The voices were a jumble, a background roar, lilting and bobbing like a sea. She wove through the obstacles, stretching further and further. She could feel her body become heavier, slower, her breathing almost noiseless. As if she was turning the sound down in herself to hear the sound around her. Vaguely, she felt the cool stethoscope that Gus placed her back, but she pushed that awareness away – she’d become accustomed to it by now.

As her hearing sharpened, it became almost like vision. Not like looking at the scene, but a sensation of being able to vaguely feel the forms and buildings. She sensed the familiarity of the place.

She picked out the voice of someone she knew – Juana Perez, a senior detective who had trained Juliet when Juliet first arrived. Though she’d never admit it to Carlton now, she’d wished that she had been assigned as Juana’s partner, but Juana and Vergil has been a team for over ten years.

“Disneyland?” Vergil said, chuckling. Juliet could hear their footfalls, how even those were in sync. “Those kids are going to run circles around you.”

“That’s what my husband’s for,” Juana said, opening the main doors to the station. “We take shifts.”

“Smart,” Vergil said. “They’re unstoppable at that age.”

“My sister’s coming along, too,” Juana said. “She’s got five of them. How she does it is beyond me.”

As they entered the station they greeted their co-workers, and Juliet shifted her focus, venturing into the larger formless mass of sound. Pencil tips scraping against paper, the _clack-clack-clack_ of keyboards, the squeak of computer chairs against the tile floors.

She started sorting, sifting, looking for a certain timber that she recognized. There were many familiar voices all around her, but she narrowed the entirety of her focus onto one in particular, stretching to try and grasp a snatch of it, a hint of it.

Down the hallway – nothing. Conference room – nothing. She was detoured in the kitchen for about ten minutes trying to sort through the lunch crowd. Nothing.

As she was turning a corner, she caught just a whisper. _There._ She made her way towards it, narrowing and narrowing her field of hearing until it became clearer. She started to be able to pick out words. She increased her speed and finally found it, a small utility closet.

Through the door, and, there –

“…short and stout, here is my handle, here is my spout. When I get all steamed up, I just shout, tip me over and pour me out!”

Juliet didn’t need to literally see Shawn to know that he was dancing his own expressive version of what the lyrics of the song meant. She shuddered to imagine.

“Ten for ten, Gus,” Juliet said out loud, snapping herself back. Then she paused, because there was a slight vertigo effect returning to her body – as if her mind were a rubber band, and there were some residual vibrations from how suddenly it had returned to its normal dimensions. She blinked a few times to clear her head before she continued. “That’s my limit for how many of Shawn’s dirty renditions of children’s songs I can listen to in a day.”

“Understandable,” Gus said, nodding as he jotted notes down on his clipboard.

"I'm still picking you up after work tonight, right?" She said, sliding on her work jacket as she stood up. His car was in the shop and she'd volunteered; she felt it was the least she could do.

"I'll be in the parking lot at six-thirty tonight," he confirmed, sliding his pen behind his ear and slipping the clipboard into his briefcase.

"Sounds good, I'll see you at six-thirty," she repeated, waving and heading to her car.

"Six-thirty," he repeated, waving after her cheerfully.

"Bye, Gus," she said, punching the reminder into her phone even though she knew she didn't need it.

*


	5. Chapter 5

She pulled into the parking lot about ten minutes early and got out to wait for Gus. Leaning against the car, she looked up the sky, where the sun was halfway set and the sky was easing into dusk. The line of the horizon was a deep red that faded into soft yellows, and the clouds were like watercolor brushstrokes in violet.

She heard Gus approaching, then, heard his quiet footfalls and the rhythm of his breathing, which felt so familiar that her hearing sought it out automatically. His heartbeat was steady, warm, and she felt more than saw him come into her sightline; she noticed how his pulse began to pick up steadily with each step he took toward her.

She looked at him, energy crackling inside of her, and felt herself expanding towards him. He slowed, blinking, and something open in his expression, something tender in his eyes. She felt the response in his body even before he reached her, the rush of his blood filling his veins, thrumming in her ears.

“Jules,” he said when he came close, and the way he said her name trickled down her throat, her spine, the backs of her calves, tingling along her nerves.

She stepped forward, reaching out and taking his free hand. Biting her lip, she closed what little space remained, leaving only a hairsbreadth between them.

“Do you want to come up with me?” She breathed out, and then she made contact; her lungs to his lungs, her stomach to his stomach, her thighs his thighs. She could feel a tremble run through him, and then he nodded, once, dropping his forehead to hers, his briefcase _thunking_ to the ground.

She was in motion before she could stop herself, putting her arms around him, pulling him as close as she dared, and every one of her senses surged, bringing her into tune with him. His blood was racing, but it wasn’t fear, it was exhilaration; his breathing stuttered, but it wasn’t a struggle, it was letting go. She brought them up slowly, steadily, heading for the low-hanging clouds. It was only moments before they were out of sight, suspended, and the last vestiges of crimson were slowly sinking into the deepening indigo.

“Juliet,” he said with quiet awe, his voice so potent in this wide void.

She leaned in and found his lips, her fists bunching in his shirt, and she moaned when she felt him pull her closer, cradling the back of her head and kissing her gently, with a slow reverence that she savored. 

She deepened the kiss, tongue flicking into his mouth, and now he was the one moaning, sending sweet vibrations through her chest, heat coiling in her belly. She began to lose the lines of where he began and she ended, as it transformed into desperate motion and heat and wordless rhythm.

After a few moments, she pulled back, head spinning. “I – just, oh, Gus –” She sighed, dropping her head into the crook of his neck, holding him tightly.

“Jules?” he said, his voice tinged with worry.

“Sometimes being the designated driver sucks,” she said into his neck, and his laughter was a pleasant rumble that felt like a light rainfall rather than an overwhelming storm.

“I got no problem taking it slow,” he said, running on his hands over her hair. “Just remember to breathe.”

She took a moment, doing just that, just enjoying the solid weight of him, the contrast of his warmth against the rapid cooling of the air.

“Thanks, Gus,” she said, lifting her head and looking up at him.

“Girl, we are literally living out my wildest fantasies right now,” he said, giving her his patented adorable smile and exaggerated eyebrow raise. “No thanks necessary.” He signaled with his head towards the last rays of light disappearing into the horizon. “Let’s watch the stars come out.”

She dropped her head onto his shoulder, and they stayed that way, watching the pinpricks of light break through the dark.

*

“Gus,” she said into her earpiece, “Gus, I think I hear him.”

She had her eyes closed and was floating high in the air. There were sounds flowing all around her like she was standing in the middle of an audio freeway – music from car radios, voices in homes, the honking on the streets, the steady pounding and screech of machinery all over the city. But she was focusing on one sound, one voice, the one that would match the kid in the home video that she’d listened to a thousand times.

“Here,” Gus crackled in her ear, “I’ll play it again.”

And there it was, Zack talking to the camera happily all about the Christmas present he’d just opened. There was this… she couldn’t quite pin down it was, something like a vibration to his voice, and it was faint in the recording, but there was a voice coming from the east end of town and it matched that vibration exactly, was like a fuller version of it.

“Get ready to meet me,” she said, opening her eyes and starting to fly towards the sound. “I’ll give you an exact location when I’m closer.”

“Got it,” Gus said, and she heard him start the car. She reached up and clicked off the earpiece so she could concentrate more fully, because it was hard to listen while she was in motion; sound was tricky, especially up here, and even though she’d been practicing flying she still wasn’t entirely used to approaching the city from the _sky_. Orienting herself was an effort and she had to make sure she flew faster – too fast to spot – when she reached visibility altitudes where some person who just happened to be pointing their camera phone up could make their first million off her.

She tightened her hands into fists when she got turned around for the third time. The way sound moved around buildings and with the wind was making her want to pull her hair out, and she decided that it was time for another approach. She knew she was in the general vicinity, so she quickly turned her earpiece on again to tell Gus where she was and then landed in a side-alley, deciding she’d go the rest of the way on foot.

She pulled out her badge to flash to anyone who tried to talk to her – honestly, just because you were walking down the street with your eyes closed for a few minutes, suddenly everyone thought they had the right to find out what you were doing – and focused in again. She slowed her breathing, lengthening her exhales so they were twice as long as her inhales; she felt her heartbeat slow in response.

Her heartbeat slowed, and she felt herself sink more into her senses. With each breath out, her hearing deepened, widened, and the sounds began to swirl around her again. A customer cursing out a taxi driver, someone singing along at the top of their lungs with Celine Dion, a teenage girl ordering a falafel for lunch… there.

“I’m thirsty,” she heard Zack say, and she kept breathing until there was nothing else, until all she could hear was the echoes of his voice. She began walking towards it.

There was a voice replying to him, but she ignored it, knowing it would only distract her. Following the sound got her another five blocks. She stopped at the intersection, unwilling to go farther until she was certain.

“But I’m _thirsty_ ,” he said, and it was almost thunderous in her ears after the silence, and as his words were echoing in her ears her eyes suddenly shot open. She suddenly knew, with preternatural certainty, exactly where he was.

She clicked on her radio as she began to run. “Corner of Fourth and Poplar,” she told Gus. “Tell backup to meet us there.”

“On my way,” Gus said, and she heard him open his cell phone to start dialing the station.

She forced herself to run at a moderate pace and the time it took her to reach the home felt excruciating. When she got there it was all she could do not to kick down the door, because she _knew_ he was in there, she could hear him, but the part of her that had spent hours drilling on procedure knew she had to do this the right way.

“SBPD!” she yelled, knocking on the door. It shook on its hinges under her assault. “Open up!”

She heard footsteps approaching the door and sirens started up in the distance – her backup was on the way. The door opened and an older woman stood on the other side, a brunette in a sweater set. Juliet recognized her from the file, had read about the interviews; this was the ex-stepmother, Sarah McCoy, the one who’d managed to have a solid enough alibi that they hadn’t followed up beyond a few standard visits.

“What’s this all about?” Sarah McCoy said, all haughtiness and pre-emptive aggression, the guilt written all over her. Juliet nearly saw red faced with this woman who had fed the detectives who interviewed her cookies and faked concern for Zack’s whereabouts.

And then she heard Zack screaming for help, and that was all the probable cause she needed.

“Out of the way!” she said, shouldering Sarah aside and running into the house, heading for his voice, and she heard wood splintering when she pulled open the door to the room where he was being kept but she couldn’t care, because there was Zack, one hand tied to the bedpost and his face stained with tears, but he was _alive_ and in one piece and the relief was so intense that it felt like a wave through her body.

“Hey, Zack, hey,” Juliet said, holstering her gun and moving slowly towards him. “I’m with the police, okay, and I’m here to help you.”

He blinked at her, looking confused and frightened.

“Hey, it’s okay, I’ll be right back, okay? I’ll be right back, I promise.”

He nodded, and she backed out of the room slowly, continuing to murmur reassurances. As soon as she was out of his line of sight, she kicked into high gear and ran to Sarah’s bedroom, where the woman had been foolish enough to try to grab her savings out of her safe before slipping out the window – Juliet reeled her right back in like a fish. Juliet had the woman cuffed and facedown on the bed within a minute, reading her her rights through gritted teeth. She could hear her back-up approaching and stayed with the woman until they arrived.

Everything after that was a blur – uniforms swarmed in and she handed the woman off to one of them. She went back to Zack, staying with him while the paramedics examined him and she briefed the officer in charge on the situation. She had the uniforms bring Gus in through the tape and he stayed back, observing the scene.

“They’re going to take you to the hospital, okay?” Juliet said to Zack. He’d been completely quiet at first, but as the reality that they were really police seemed to sink in his eyes started to look a little brighter, like they were taking more in.

“Okay,” he said, nodding.

“They’re going to take good care of you,” she said.

He nodded again. He waved to her as the paramedics let him to the ambulance and she waved back, smiling and wanting to cry at the same time.

*

Life was definitely different, sometimes in new ways she was still discovering on a daily basis. Juliet felt like she was trying to juggle two different lives that sometimes overlapped and sometimes tried to pull her apart down the middle; it was incredible and frustrating all at once.

There were definite perks to her powers. Running after suspects had lost most of its suspense and was now mostly a matter of keeping her speed in check. Sometimes when she was sure one of her coworkers would get the suspect she’d purposefully fall back. There was also the matter of figuring out her limits in the context of their budding relationship – sometimes her senses became overwhelmed, sometimes she was scared of accidentally hurting him – but it certainly wasn’t stopping her from pouncing him every chance she got, though (usually) on the ground just to be safe for now.

There were drawbacks, too, though; the first time she’d gone to a murder scene the smell and _taste_ of the body had left her feeling nauseated for days. Hoping to avoid further incidents, she dutifully gave Gus her journals every few days and he pored over them like they were great works of literature. He was constantly generating graphs and charts for her that sometimes clarified things for her and sometimes made her think that Gus had entirely too much fun with PhotoShop. But the breathing exercises he suggested did help and she managed not to lose her lunch at the next murder scene, so she counted that as a win.

Gus, of course, insisted that they keep testing the limits of her range. Some of the tests were fun; doing flips in the air to figure out her aerial agility and precision had to be one of the coolest thing she’d ever gotten to do in the name of science. The tactile tests rarely ended with any clothing on, and she had no problem with that. A lot of them, though, were disconcerting; after Gus had watched her crush a car down to the size of a basketball with her bare hands, he’d admitted that he wasn't even sure how to measure her strength. The scariest part was that Juliet hadn’t even felt like she’d reached the full limit of her exertion.

One night, her phone had buzzed at 4AM and Shawn’s voice had sounded strangely subdued on the other end. “You weren’t just messing with me, were you?” he’d said, and she’d listened to him breathe for a few minutes before saying, “No, Shawn, I wasn’t.” Then he’d kept her up for an hour talking about every single thing she’d suspected he’d been bottling up while he was avoiding her, and she curled up with Ginger and listened to him, not even bothering to correct him when he took credit for two cases Lassiter had solved because sometimes Shawn needed to be humored. And it wasn’t long before he was asking her to open jars for him (that she later discovered he’d superglued shut) and having her fetch action figures of his that had _mysteriously_ ended up lodged in the ceiling, so she figured he was coming around in his own odd, Shawn-ish way.

When she finally had a day slow enough that she managed to have a lunch break that didn’t involve one hand on a steering wheel and the other holding whatever fast-food item had looked least appalling on the menu, she made her way to Vick’s office and knocked on the door.

Vick looked up from her desk. “Detective,” she said, sliding off her glasses. “What can I do for you?”

“I had a request, chief,” Juliet said, coming in. 

“Sit,” Vick said.

“Thanks,” Juliet said, taking the seat. She slid over the piece of paper she’d been holding and Vick took it. “I was wondering if it would be all right if I looked into these disappearances.”

Vick glanced over the list, then back up at Juliet. “We stopped investigating all of these for a reason. We did the best we could, but they were going nowhere.”

“I know,” Juliet said, and tried to still the jitters she was feeling. She’d thought about this very carefully, sorted out only the cases she thought there was a chance she could really help with. “But I really think I might be able to resolve them.”

“And what makes you think that?” Vick said. Her tone was curious and her expression neutral as she watched Juliet. Juliet didn’t quite feel like she was being tested, but she knew Vick hadn’t forgotten the drinks they’d shared and Vick was putting a lot of trust in her not to push the issue.

“There’s a new approach I’d like to try,” Juliet said. “On my own time, of course. I wouldn’t let this interfere with current cases.”

“Of course,” Vick said, smiling a little like Juliet had just made a joke. Juliet wasn’t sure if she was supposed to smile back or not – reading the chief’s subtleties was not something that had gotten easier with superpowers – and she spent so long in the limbo in-between that Vick had already moved on. “Very well, detective. I see no reason not to let you follow up on these provided it won’t impede any current investigations.”

“Thank you, chief,” Juliet said, smiling gratefully.

Vick nodded and slipped her glasses back on, looking down at her paperwork. Juliet rose and walked for the door.

“You’ll let me know how this method of yours goes?” Vick said from behind her.

Juliet stopped at the doorway, looking back. Vick hadn’t looked up from her papers. “Of course,” she said.

“Of course,” Vick repeated, smiling a little.

*

"I appreciate the help," she said, watching as Gus pretended to strain himself.

"I could lift this on my own, you know," he said, "if I had to."

"I've got it," she said, letting just a little more weight fall onto his side so he wouldn't feel too bad about himself. They were moving one half of her bed out, maneuvering it through the doorway into the hall. She suspected that it would look strange if she lifted it above her head with one hand, so she'd asked for his help.

"Hey!" Shawn said, his head popping up and appearing behind Gus. "You guys got started without me."

"We called you three times," Gus said. "Your answering machine said 'I am unavailable to move furniture right now, please try again later.' That seemed pretty clear."

"No, see, what I _meant_ was, 'I am unavailable to do any real lifting of furniture, but when people appear I will climb underneath and pretend I'm holding the entire thing up by myself.'"

"Yeah," Gus said, rolling his eyes. "That sounds about right."

"So let's get a move on," Shawn said, clapping his hands. "I got my 'I'm too sexy for this couch' face perfect in the mirror this morning."

"Please refrain," Juliet said, but she smiled, because more than the two of them providing a cover for her, she needed this. She hated to see her bed go -- her milestone, her celebration of settling here -- but she knew it was time. She was hovering in the air every night, now, and until Gus figured out some treatment or if such a thing was even possible, she wouldn't even need a replacement. She was considering setting up another desk in her bedroom. Maybe one where she kept notes on the cases she wanted to start working on the side. She still didn't think a costume would be the way to go for quite some time, but she and Gus kept tweaking their designs just for the fun of it. (Shawn kept suggesting "more bikini-esque." Juliet kept subtly blowing out of the side of her lips and messing up his hair. The proper balance was maintained.)

"Target acquired, one o'clock," Shawn said, trying to dart underneath the bed.

"Shawn!" Gus hissed, "get the hell out of there before we accidentally crush you."

But Juliet kept a firm hold on the headboard, and smiled, because some things would always stay the same.


End file.
